Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

Contents
Introduction 1
Why Is the US Invading Somalia? 5
The Return to Colonialism 11
Colonialism's Humanitarian Mask 17
Somalia: A History of Imperialist Brutality 23
The Ugly Face of US Colonialism 47
Imperialism's Drive to Reenslave Africa 51
US Massacre in Mogadishu 55
Notes 61
Maps: The Carve-Up of the Horn of Africa (1862-1925) 69
The Horn of Africa Today 71
Index 73

© 1993 by Labor Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-929087-61-5
Published by Labor Publications, Inc.
P.O. Box 5174
Southfield, Michigan 48086
Printed in the United States of America

Introduction
The US invasion of Somalia was launched with great fanfare by
a lame-duck president who just one month before had been
overwhelmingly defeated at the polls. Virtually overnight, and without
even the semblance of a public debate, President Bush announced
he was sending an occupation force on a "rescue mission." Presidentelect
Clinton immediately announced his full support.
Alongside the US Marines, the mass media were mobilized to
overwhelm the American public with heartbreaking scenes of starving
Somali children. For several weeks the words "invasion" and
"military" were inseparable from "humanitarian." Journalists and
academics held forth on the new, "philanthropic" role of the Pentagon.
The complex web of historical, social and political forces that had
produced the catastrophe in Somalia were reduced in the official
presentation of events to a series of soundbites and epithets. There
was the notable example of NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw in
Mogadishu describing the warring Somali factions as "yahoos."
Insofar as there was any pretense of an explanation for the social
calamity that had engulfed Somalia, it was limited to denunciations
of the "war lords." They became the latest in a growing list of
officially designated malefactors — such as the "drug king" Manuel
Noriega and the "tyrant" Saddam Hussein — whose transgressions
had to be punished by dispatching the US military to bomb and shoot
the local populations and occupy their territory.
There was no examination of the bloody and sordid history of
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European imperialism in the Horn of Africa, or the more recent role
of the United States in propping up tyrants like deposed Somali
leader Siad Barre, sponsoring right-wing insurgencies and fomenting
tribal warfare throughout the continent.
Silence about the past was required to justify the crimes of
American imperialism in the present and those being prepared for the
future. Journalists, scholars and political figures — from Andrew
Young to former CIA chief Richard Helms — were brought forward
to declare that the United States was acting selflessly and had "no
strategic interest" in Somalia.
The invasion was greeted with universal enthusiasm across the
spectrum of bourgeois politics. Faced with a unilateral White House
decision to dispatch 30,000 troops, a naval armada, planes, tanks and
attack helicopters halfway around the world, Congress did not even
bother to go through the motions of a debate.
Within a few weeks of the American troops landing in Mogadishu,
the media's preoccupation with the fate of starving Somalia had
vanished as suddenly as it had arisen. With US, French, Italian and
other forces attacking Somalis from one part of the country to the
other, and the toll of civilian dead and wounded rising daily, the
consensus had become: the less said, the better.
Moreover, the activities of US envoy Robert Oakley in putting
together a new Somali political apparatus subservient to Washington,
and establishing a US-trained police force were better left in the
dark.
By the end of February, less than three months after being
dispatched for the supposed purpose of feeding starving children,
American troops in Mogadishu were gunning down youth demonstrating
against colonialism as they chanted "US Out of Somalia."
As of this writing, plans were being implemented for the military
occupation of Somalia to be placed under UN auspices, with the
United States maintaining some 5,000 ground troops and an offshore
force of sailors and marines.
This book presents the record of the Workers League's response
to the invasion of Somalia. It consists of articles and editorial
statements published in the Bulletin, the party's weekly newspaper.
These articles are examples of what is a rarity today — the critical
and historical analysis of contemporary political and social developments.
At a time when the networks parrot the press handouts of the
military and call it "the news," when the Pentagon public relations
office sets the political, ideological and moral tone for the country,

the thoughtful reader will find the assessment presented here both
informative and stimulating.
A particularly vital challenge falls to the Marxist party under
conditions of imperialist war and colonial conquest, when the machinery
of hypocrisy and deceit of bourgeois society is placed on full
throttle. The party which represents the socialist working class must
cut through the maze of official lies and present a scientific analysis
of events.
It must place the present developments within their real historical
context, revealing the general trend of imperialist military, economic
and political intervention. It must expose, behind the hypocritical
statements of the policy makers, their actual aims and motives. And
it must show the class interests which underlie the actions of the
government, warning of the implications of imperialist aggression
abroad for the democratic rights and social conditions of the working
class at home.
The Workers League undertook this task from the outset of the
invasion of Somalia. As the Bulletin editorial board statement of
December 4, 1992 explained:
"In reality, the United States is preparing to carry out the military
occupation of Somalia so it can install a puppet regime and establish
American military and economic hegemony over the region.
"What is involved here is not simply an isolated military adventure,
but the drive of American imperialism to recolonize Africa and
large parts of Asia and Latin America."
Succeeding issues of the Bulletin sought to expose the claims of
Bush, Clinton and the media that the invasion was carried out for the
purpose of feeding starving Somalis; to reveal the real economic,
political and military aims of the intervention; and to provide an
outline of the history of imperialist domination of the region — the
real source of the social catastrophe which has befallen the Somali
people, as well as hundreds of millions more throughout Africa, Asia,
the Middle East and Latin America.
The final three articles published in this book document the brutal
reality of the imperialist occupation of Somalia, and the way in which
the invasion of this country has already paved the way for the return
of colonial troops to other parts of Africa.
The publication of this book is part of the Workers League's
struggle to politically arm the working class and create the conditions
for its mobilization in defense of the Somali people and all those
oppressed by US imperialism.

Why Is the US Invading Somalia?
Almost overnight the United States has dispatched 1,800 marines
to the eastern African country of Somalia and another 30,000
troops are on the way.
The occupation of Somalia has been undertaken with virtually no
explanation from the Bush administration and without even the
pretense of a public debate.
Only the flimsiest of reasons for the sudden dispatch of troops are
being offered. Meanwhile the American people are being overwhelmed
by a hypocritical and cynical media barrage which depicts
the invasion as a noble act of humanitarian aid to the starving Somali
people.
Its object is to politically chloroform US public opinion so that the
occupation of Somalia is a fait acompli before the masses of people
have even had time to consider its implications.
A moment's reflection, however, makes clear that the huge deployment
of troops, ships, planes and supplies to the Indian Ocean,
which began within a few days of the first public disclosure of the
proposed operation, is the product of many months of intensive
planning and preparation.
A human tragedy of incalculable dimensions is indeed unfolding
in this poverty-stricken country in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of
men, women and children are dying of starvation. But one would have
to abandon all critical faculties to accept as good coin the assertions
First appeared in the Bulletin on December 4, 1992
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of the big business media and politicians that the current military
action is motivated by a desire to alleviate the suffering of the Somali
people.
Relief workers publicly dispute Bush's claim that there has been a
sharp decline in recent weeks in the movement of food supplies to
famine-stricken Somalis. And many of the relief agencies on the spot
have denounced the US decision to send in troops.
A spokeswoman from the Somalia Relief Agency of Britain told
the Bulletin, "The troops will contribute to the conflict. They will not
help it.... The US is trying to use this situation to get back into the
country."
No government official has even attempted to clarify why a
30,000-strong force backed by ships, attack helicopters and bombers
is required to ensure the delivery of food supplies. Nor have they
explained why American troops are to be stationed at key locations
throughout the country, even though only a portion of southern
Somalia is affected by the famine.
There are many places around the world where masses of people
are dying from hunger and disease, including Mozambique, Angola,
Bangladesh and India. One country where children face death from
illness and starvation is Iraq. There the cause of the human disaster
is well known — the genocidal bombing campaign of the United
States combined with the economic blockade maintained by the
United Nations, the very forces which now claim to be intervening
into Somalia to "save lives."
But Somalia has been chosen from among these poverty-stricken
countries as the target for immediate military occupation for definite
reasons which have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns.
The White House and Pentagon interest in Somalia is based on
the strategic importance of this region to the economic, military and
geopolitical interests of American imperialism. The Horn of Africa
faces across the Indian Ocean to India in the east; it lies along the Red
Sea waterway to Egypt and Israel; it lies across a narrow strip of water
from the oil-rich Arabian peninsula; and it provides a direct ocean
path to the Persian Gulf and Iran.
For many years the US maintained a military and intelligence base
in Berbera, on the northern coast across the Gulf of Aden from
Yemen. A large percentage of Europe's oil supplies passes along the
Horn of Africa and control of Somalia would give the US enormous
leverage against its imperialist rivals. It would as well strengthen
American military striking power in the Middle East, the Persian

Gulf, northern Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
The toll of disease and death in Somalia is the end product of more
than a century of colonial oppression, carried out by the British,
French and Italians, followed by the semicolonial enslavement of the
country through such institutions as the United Nations, the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The Stalinist bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union played a no
less reactionary role, helping in the late 1960s and early 1970s to
impose the brutal dictatorship of Siad Barre on the Somali masses and
even proclaiming his regime to be a "socialist state."
The United States played a crucial role in preparing the present
catastrophe, backing Siad Barre since the mid-1970s as a counterweight
to the Soviet influence in neighboring Ethiopia. With the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, Washington withdrew its support
for the Barre regime, leading to its collapse in early 1991.
But Somalia is only one of many countries in Africa where
American imperialist intervention and intrigue led to social disaster.
As part of its Cold War struggle against Soviet influence on the
continent, the US deliberately fomented civil war and backed counterrevolutionary
mercenary forces in one country after another.
Among its most notorious proxies were RENAMO in Mozambique
and UNIT A in Angola. Hundreds of thousands are today starving in
these two countries alone as a result of US policies.
Bush has managed to cram two bloody invasions of small and
oppressed countries into his single term, killing hundreds of thousands
for the ostensible purpose of putting down dictators in Panama
and Iraq.
Now, with the elections out of the way, and with the full support
of the incoming Democratic administration, he plans to end his term
of office with another military onslaught against a defenseless people.
American imperialism has always justified its acts of military
aggression on the noblest "humanitarian" grounds. This was the case
from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to the war in Vietnam.
Reagan occupied Beirut and bombed Libya supposedly to combat
"terrorism," and he invaded Grenada to "save American lives."
In every one of these wars, the official explanations given at the
time — from the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor to
the defense of "tiny Kuwait" — have subsequently been shown to be
a pack of* lies. 1
In reality, the United States is preparing to carry out the military
occupation of Somalia so it can install a puppet regime and establish
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American military and economic hegemony over the region.
What is involved here is not simply an isolated military adventure,
but the drive of American imperialism to recolonize Africa and large
parts of Asia and Latin America. As Washington Post columnist
Richard Cohen declared this past week: "Yes, there's a whiff of whiteman-burdenism'here,
but so what?"
The US intervention in Somalia is a warning of things to come, not
just in Africa, but in "trouble spots" around the world such as Bosnia,
the former Soviet Union, Haiti, North Korea, Cambodia and elsewhere.
It is a dramatic expression of a pronounced shift on the part of
American imperialism to an increasingly aggressive policy — economic,
political and military — directed above all against its main
imperialist rivals in Europe and Japan. As in the gulf war, the United
States is using its military supremacy to strengthen its strategic
position and demonstrate to its "allies" Germany and Japan that it has
the ability to act unilaterally.
This military action comes in the midst of deepening trade
conflicts between the US, Europe and Japan and sharpening
interimperialist tensions in the aftermath of the collapse of the
Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Many columnists and capitalist politicians are stating that the
United States should take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet
Union and use its military forces to intervene all over the world. They
openly cite Somalia as a test case and the first of many invasions to
come. Considerations of national sovereignty, they proclaim, must
not be allowed to block the US from intervening militarily throughout
Africa, Latin America and Asia.
Jim Hoagland, the foreign affairs columnist for the Washington
Post, wrote: "Freed from Cold War restraints and obligations, the
American military may turn out to be the ideal organization for global
humanitarian emergencies. Somalia could be a turning point in the
Pentagon's search for vital new missions. It could revive and give
content to the idea of an America-led new world order."
Speaking on the McNeil-Lehrer television news program, former
CIA chief Richard Helms declared: "It's a new ball game. I've been
saying for a long time that we haven't had the foggiest idea what to so
with all these trouble spots in the world. You've only mentioned four
or five. There are lots of others in the old Soviet Union, and so forth.
"This is an entirely different ball game.... It seems to me that
Somalia is a great place to kick it off..."

Asked whether US intervention into an internal situation in
another country worried him, former UN Ambassador Andrew
Young said, "It doesn't bother me at all. One of the things we're going
to have to do in places like Liberia, to some extent in Haiti... we're
going to have to find a way under the auspices of the United Nations
to deal with internal questions.... It is appropriate that we learn what
is possible and what is necessary in Somalia and then we see how that
lesson can be applied with others."
The shameless subservience of the United Nations to the latest
predatory moves of the United States further exposes its reactionary
role. The fiction of the United Nations as a benevolent mediator
between imperialist and oppressed nations has been exploded by the
collapse of Stalinism and the breakup of the postwar imperialist
order.
The turn by American imperialism to military force abroad is
accompanied by the ever more flagrant disregard for the traditional
forms of democratic procedure at home. The White House no longer
makes even a pretense of seeking congressional approval for the
launching of wars which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars
and sacrifice the lives and limbs of thousands of young workers.
Bush announced his plans for troops to Somalia and a week later
the first contingent of 1,800 marines was on its way, without a single
vote taken or so much as a debate in Congress.
Congress and the politicians of both big business parties are, for
their part, more than happy to cede all power to the White House, the
Pentagon and the CIA.
It is no surprise that the lackeys of American capitalism who head
the AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers give their support to the
occupation of Somalia. Their backing for the bloodbath against Iraq
was a pledge that the labor bureaucracy would do its part to subordinate
the working class to the war machine of American imperialism.
The invasion of Somalia is, moreover, the clearest demonstration
of the reactionary character of the incoming Clinton administration.
It shows that there is no essential difference between the Democratic
and Republican parties, both of which are political instruments of
American imperialism.
How can one explain the ability of an administration which
suffered a massive repudiation at the polls to take such drastic action
after the elections, except for the fact that the military intervention
was secretly discussed and agreed to in advance by Clinton and the
Democrats?
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Among the most enthusiastic supporters of America's new colonial
aspirations in Africa are the liberal black Democrats, such as Jesse
Jackson and Andrew Young, who thereby demonstrate once more
their role as abject lackeys of American imperialism.
This latest military adventure is not an expression of any strength
on the part of American and world capitalism. On the contrary, it
reflects the deepening crisis and breakup of world imperialism, and
the sharp decline in the world position of American capitalism. As in
the Desert Storm assault on Iraq, America is seeking, with increasing
recklessness, to use its residual military supremacy to offset its
economic decline in relation to its imperialist rivals.
But the adventure in Somalia will no more solve the historic crisis
of American capitalism than did the massacre carried out by the US
in Iraq. Far from restoring imperialist "stability," it will ultimately
fuel the flames of popular revolt against colonial-style oppression
throughout Africa.
It will be accompanied by even deeper attacks on the democratic
rights and living standards of the American working class at home.
Workers are faced with the necessity to draw the historic lessons
of the growth of depression, fascist and racist violence and militarism
all over the world. They are all symptoms of the mortal crisis of
capitalism and its historically outmoded nation-state system.
The only answer to the drive of imperialism to world war is the
international unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism.
This is the perspective and program of the Workers League and our
co-thinkers in the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The Return to Colonialism
1. The Workers League unequivocally condemns the US invasion
of Somalia. The unleashing of tens of thousands of troops, backed by
warships, jet fighters and attack helicopters, is a brutal violation of the
sovereignty of the Somali people. It signals a return to the naked
colonial enslavement of the oppressed peoples not only of Africa, but
throughout the world.
2. The cynicism, hypocrisy, and downright lying that have accompanied
this latest military adventure are extraordinary — even by
White House standards. The military subjugation of an African
country is being palmed off by the American government and its
media lackeys as a "humanitarian mission"!
3. Just two days after the first marines landed in Mogadishu, Bush
sent a letter to Congress repudiating his initial claim that the
intervention would be over before the January 20 inauguration of
Clinton. Bush acknowledged there would be no deadline for the
troops' withdrawal, and that additional forces might have to be sent.
Already the government is indicating that it has set into motion a
protracted military occupation of the African nation.
4. The claim that 30,000 US troops are needed to feed starving
Somali people is a fraud. Virtually all credible relief agencies in the
country insisted that food could be delivered to those in need without
placing the population under the jackboot of the military. Within 24
hours of the invasion, two Somalis were killed and seven more were
First appeared in the Bulletin on December 11, 1992
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wounded in a hail of bullets fired by American marines and French
legionnaires. The Pentagon's marching orders, it seems, are to "save"
the Somali people by killing any of them who get in its way!
5. The human tragedy which Washington invokes as the pretext
for its invasion is itself a product of imperialist policy. The collapse
of Somalia is only one example of imperialism's systematic destruction
of the national economies of all the oppressed countries. UScontrolled
financial institutions such as the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank have imposed capitalist free market
policies aimed at the wholesale privatization of state enterprises and
a drastic reduction in consumption. These policies have condemned
billions to hunger and misery.
6. The American invasion of Somalia marks the onset of a new
imperialist drive to carve up Africa and the rest of the former colonial
world. The countries of Africa and Asia which achieved political
independence after World War II from the old colonial empires of
Europe are once again to be placed under foreign military rule.
7. The lie that the US military represents the "humanitarian"
solution to starvation in Somalia is a rationale for colonial domination
by the United States of much of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, approvingly cited in a recent
article the statement of a historian who wrote that the United
Nations, acting on behalf of the major imperialist powers, should
begin "moving into the business of government, taking countries into
its trusteeship for varying periods...." The Wall Street Journal then
commented: "There is a word for this: colonialism."
8. Much has been said about the "death of Marxism," but never has
Lenin's analysis of imperialism been more clearly vindicated than
today. In words no less relevant than when they were written more
than 75 years ago, Lenin characterized imperialism as the "exploitation
of an increasing number of small or weak nations by an extremely
small group of the richest or more powerful nations." 1
9. The US invasion is a manifestation of the irrevocable breakdown
of the post-World War II imperialist order. The conditions of
extreme crisis and deepening world recession which characterize the
world capitalist system compel imperialism to do away with the
limited concessions, including political independence, granted to the
former colonial countries in the postwar period. This global crisis is
the source of the scramble for control of markets, sources of raw
materials and cheap labor between the major capitalist countries.
Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was a key element

of the old world order, has enormously accelerated this process.
10. The invasion of Somalia sets the stage for a sharp escalation of
the conflicts — economic, political and ultimately military — among
the major imperialist powers. A pattern has emerged: from Panama,
to Iraq, to Somalia. The US is seeking to position itself to obtain
maximum advantage against its rivals. This global struggle is what
consumes the incoming Clinton administration. For their part, Japan
and Germany are neither able nor willing to stand by indefinitely
while American imperialism seeks to reassert by military means its
former economic hegemony. The new eruption of American military
aggression thus contains the seeds of World War III.
11. This latest US intervention is not a sudden reaction to the
famine in Somalia. It is the product of long-debated and wellprepared
plans for the deployment of US forces all over the world.
Last March The New York Times leaked the Pentagon's "Defense
Planning Guidance" for 1994-1999, which called for an expanded
use of military force to establish US domination over Africa, Asia,
Latin America, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. The
document also called for measures to maintain American military
supremacy over Germany and Japan. It declared: "Our strategy must
now refocus on precluding the emergence of any future global
competitor... to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region
whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to
general global power. These regions include Western Europe, East
Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia."
12. Two months earlier, Jane's Defence Weekly magazine published
an article entitled "Flash Points, Confusion, Chaos and Conflict,"
which listed dozens of countries around the world as potential areas
for military intervention. The article cited 75 potential border
disputes within the former USSR; in the Balkans it cited Yugoslavia,
Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania; in the Middle East,
Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Iran; in Africa, Libya, Egypt,
Morocco, Zaire, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and other countries;
all of the countries of the Indian subcontinent; in Southeast
Asia, Burma, Korea, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam; Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and China in East Asia; and
Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Peru and
Suriname in Latin America.
13. Workers should apply their critical faculties to the constantly
repeated claim that Somalia is of no strategic interest to the United
States. Anyone who looks at a map of the Horn of Africa, which
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Somalia occupies, can see the absurdity of this assertion. The region
is of vital military, economic and political importance. It lies across
the Gulf of Aden from the oil-rich Arabian peninsula, down the Red
Sea from Israel and Egypt, and across the Indian Ocean from the
Indian subcontinent. In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of
1979, the Pentagon dispatched teams to Somalia in pursuit of military
base agreements to secure US imperialist interests throughout the
region.
14. Since the beginnings of Europe's colonial empires, this was
one of the most hotly contested regions of Africa. Britain, France and
Italy all established colonial holdings in the Horn of Africa. After
formal independence, US imperialism vied with the Soviet Union for
domination of the region. As part of this Cold War struggle, the US
fomented civil wars and backed military thugs in Somalia and many
other African countries, creating the conditions for the famine that
stalks the entire region today. The US poured hundreds of millions
dollars into Somalia and propped up the regime of Siad Barre for
more than a decade, maintaining a military and intelligence base at
the northern Somali city of Berbera. Under US protection Barre
slaughtered tens of thousands of Somalis in the northern part of the
country in the late 1980s. His regime collapsed when the US
withdrew its support following the breakup of the Soviet regime.
15. What about the vast mineral wealth of Africa? Is not the
dispatch of 30,000 troops connected to the rich deposits of titanium,
cobalt, magnesium, gold and other precious and strategic metals and
minerals that exist on the continent?
16. Clinton has declared his full support for the invasion of
Somalia, and insisted that no time limit be placed on the deployment
of American forces there. He told a Washington press conference on
Tuesday, "We believe that this mission has merit and that an artificial
timetable cannot be imposed upon it." Nothing could more clearly
demonstrate the reactionary character of the incoming Democratic
administration and the fact that Clinton is no less a representative of
American imperialism than his Republican opponent in the elections.
If anything, Clinton is promising to accelerate the use of American
military force abroad. Last month he emerged from his first White
House meeting with Bush and boasted of having discussed 15
international "trouble spots" with the outgoing president.
17. The assault on Somalia has laid bare the utter decay of so-called
democracy in America. None of the big business candidates mentioned
a word about impending war during the election campaign.

But once the vote was out of the way and the ruling class, by means
of its two-party system and its media manipulation of public opinion,
had selected its chosen representative, the war was launched. Overnight,
hundreds of millions of dollars were allocated and thousands
of youth were sent to fight without any public debate. The political
eunuchs in Congress gladly ceded their constitutional prerogatives to
the White House and the Pentagon. They did not even mount the
pretense of a congressional debate, such as that which preceded the
war on Iraq. The two political parties which had just engaged in
months of mutual mudslinging were in total accord. And this farflung
operation, which has vast implications for the working class in
the United States and around the world, was carried out by a lame
duck government that had just been routed and humiliated at the
polls!
18. The unbridled militarism which increasingly dominates American
politics has the gravest implications for the American working
class. A capitalist nation which imposes colonial slavery on workers
and oppressed peoples abroad is compelled to attack the democratic
rights and conditions of life of workers at home. The watchword of
all class-conscious workers must be: US hands off Somalia!
19. It goes without saying that the official trade union organizations
will hail the subjugation of Somalia. For our part, the Workers
League stands on the side of the Somali masses and all oppressed
peoples in the struggle against US imperialism. There is no doubt
that the drive to recolonize the oppressed countries will generate
massive resistance around the world. The people of Africa, Asia and
Latin America will not accept enslavement by imperialist conquerors.
20. The ultimate end of this adventure, and of military interventions
to come, will be a bloody catastrophe for US imperialism.
American workers can prevent themselves from being dragged into
this disaster only through the organization of an independent political
struggle against American capitalism.
21. Long ago the Fourth International warned that the world
would be brought face to face with the volcanic eruption of American
imperialism. That time is at hand. The way forward in the fight
against militarism, depression and the attack on democratic rights is
the struggle for the international unity of the working class on the
basis of the program of world socialist revolution.
15

Colonialism's Humanitarian Mask
In the past weeks the Bulletin has been asked by sympathetic readers
and even Workers League supporters whether its opposition to
the US intervention in Somalia is justified in the face of the starvation
prevailing in that country.
Given the situation which exists there right now, they ask, is it not
permissible to be somewhat less intransigent in opposing US troops?
Such thinking is perhaps understandable from an emotional point
of view. But it tends to overlook that when it comes to formulating a
policy, one must think not only of the "now," but also the "before"
and "after." The solution to today's problems must be grounded in an
understanding of their historical roots and the long-term consequences
of the policies adopted to resolve them.
Let us review this question.
Washington has justified the occupation of Somalia by 30,000
combat troops, armed with the most advanced weaponry, with the
claim that it is carrying out a "humanitarian" mission to bring an end
to starvation in this African country.
The big business media never hint that there could be any other
interests involved. It excludes any reference to the country's history,
previous US involvement in Somalia or any real examination of the
causes of the deadly famine which is stalking much of Africa and Asia.
Already the initial statements of Bush that Operation Restore
Hope would be merely a short-term relief*mission have been exposed
First appeared in the Bulletin as an editorial on December 18, 1992
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is
as a lie. The White House, Congress and the media openly acknowledge
that this is the beginning of an openrended military occupation,
both in terms of its duration and the number of troops.
Every worker recognizes the necessity of delivering food to a
famine-stricken people. But no one has even attempted to explain
why the conditions in Somalia can only be answered with the largest
invasion of Africa since Mussolini's troops marched into Ethiopia.
When Bush first announced the planned US operation, he insisted
that troops had to be sent immediately to deal with a drastic deterioration
in the conditions facing the Somali people. He asserted that the
movement of food to famine zones had been reduced to a trickle and
that the rate of starvation was rapidly rising. This has since been
exposed as a bare-faced lie. It is now universally acknowledged that,
as bad as conditions remain, the level of starvation has been declining
over the last several months and the worst of the famine is over.
Washington insisted from the outset that the vast military might
of the Pentagon was the only suitable instrument for delivering food
to the Somalis. This is one more lie. Many of those involved in Somali
relief vehemently disputed this claim at the time and said that they
were already overcoming political and logistical obstacles to the
movement of food supplies.
Workers should consider the scope of the present US military
deployment in Somalia. Some 30,000 marines and soldiers have
landed and are fanning out throughout the country. Heavily-armed
helicopter gunships fly constantly over the capital of Mogadishu in an
attempt to intimidate the population. Already these gunships have
fired tow missiles into pickup trucks, killing an estimated 15 Somalis.
US armored cars patrol the streets and alleyways of the city, while
fortified roadblocks have been set up in many areas. In one instance
last week, marines joined French Legionnaires in raking an entire
family with gunfire when it failed to stop its van at a roadblock. Two
were killed and seven seriously wounded. The New York Times in its
report on this event referred to the men, women and children who
were shot as "Somali gunmen."
Meanwhile, off the coast, a naval armada which includes an aircraft
carrier and other warships patrols the strategically vital sea lanes
linking the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian
Ocean.
It is self-evident that such a massive military operation involves
much more than the delivery of food to the hungry.
The media has good reason not to tell the American people

anything about either Somalia's history or the background to its
present crisis. In the Somali invasion, they are following the same
pattern established in Panama and Iraq. Fundamental questions are
concealed so that the latest target of military aggression — whether
the "drug-running" Noriega, the "Iraqi dictator" Hussein or the "war
lords" of Somalia — can be demonized.
History shows that the present famine in Somalia is the end result
of more than a century of colonial oppression and imperialist intervention,
in which the United States has played a major role. The
Somali people, like the people of all of Africa, are suffering from the
bitter legacy of the colonial carveup of the continent by the European
powers.
In the post-World War II period, the US played the major role
among the imperialist powers in fomenting civil wars, backing
mercenary armies and promoting conditions of economic collapse
and famine in line with its Cold War struggle against Soviet influence
on the continent. For example, the US supported the infamous
mercenary forces of RENAMO in Mozambique and UNITA in
Angola, contributing in this way to the famine which now stalks
southern Africa.
In Somalia, the US backed the dictator Siad Barre from the mid-
1970s, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and
maintaining a military base in the northern port city of Berbera.
Under conditions of the disintegration of the USSR, the US had no
more use for Siad Barre. Washington withdrew its aid and the regime
collapsed in January 1991, giving rise to civil war conditions.
From the onset of the invasion, the politicians and the media have
incessantly claimed that the US has "no strategic interests" in
Somalia. If this is the case, why have the imperialists been struggling
for more than a century for control of the country? In reality, Somalia
occupies part of the Horn of Africa, one of the most critical geopolitical
positions in the world.
US imperialism bears responsibility for hunger not only in Somalia,
but throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. US-dominated
agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank have imposed draconian austerity program in country after
country, condemning literally billions of human beings to poverty
and hunger.
In the Somali operation, the US and the United Nations are
claiming the mantle of humanitarianism. Supposedly, they are operating
on the purest motives, i.e., alleviating hunger and human
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20
suffering. How is it to be explained that these same forces are involved
in the deliberate starvation of other peoples? In Iraq, children
continue to die by the thousands as a result of the US war and UN
sanctions. Meanwhile, Washington has tightened its economic blockade
of Cuba, threatening the people there with the cutoff of food and
medicine.
Workers cannot allow their political judgement to be guided
simply by an immediate emotional response to the suffering in
Somalia. The ruling class and its media apparatus are experts in the
cynical exploitation of images of this suffering to further the interests
of American imperialism.
Moreover, it is necessary to bear in mind that when you give
political support, you have to take responsibility for the consequences.
If you support the intervention of US Marines in Somalia,
you then share responsibility if those same marines shoot down
Somali civilians. You have to take responsibility for what they do, not
only in the next few months, but over the course of years.
As in every other major question, the working class must assume
its own independent class standpoint. To cede to imperialism the task
of rescuing its own victims is to accept the rationale for the
recolonization of not only Somalia, but all of the oppressed countries,
and for US military interventions around the world.
Even as US forces are consolidating their grip over Somalia, it was
announced on Wednesday that thousands of imperialist troops are
being dispatched to Mozambique and the US is pressing for "preemptive"
air strikes against Serbia.
If American military intervention is justified by the starvation in
Somalia, why not send US troops into other countries where capitalism
has created starvation, civil war and mass suffering? India, the
former Soviet Union, parts of Latin America and many other lands
are all likely targets.
Leading spokesmen for US imperialism have been making a case
precisely for such interventions. In a television interview earlier this
month, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew
Young said, "We've got to find ways to stem the tide of chaos in the
world ... in places like Liberia, to some extent in Haiti... we're going
to have to find a way under the auspices of the United Nations to deal
with internal questions.... It's appropriate that we learn what is
possible and what is necessary in Somalia and then we see how that
lesson can be applied with others."
In an editorial published on December 17 entitled "Choosing

Wars of Conscience," The New York Times made the case for the
"humanitarian duty of intervention." The editorial cited the Balkans,
Liberia and the Sudan.
The invasion of Somalia is a brutal act of imperialist aggression. It
signals the onset of a drive by imperialism to recolonize countries
which gained their independence in the postwar period. In the last
century, the rape of Africa, Asia and the Middle East by the European
powers was carried out in the name of a "civilizing mission" and the
"white man's burden." So too today, the American imperialists seek
to mask naked economic interests — the control of markets, raw
materials and sources of cheap labor—with the hypocritical rhetoric
of humanitarianism.
21

Somalia
A History of Imperialist Brutality
The occupation of Somalia by the troops of 12 countries, led by
the United States, is the latest chapter in more than a century
of imperialist military aggression against the peoples of the Horn of
Africa. Without a knowledge of this history, it is impossible to
understand the present crisis in Somalia or the responsibility of the
major capitalist powers for the conditions of starvation and civil war
which are the pretext for the UN-sponsored occupation.
The capitalist media, which has been mobilized along with the US
Marines and the French Foreign Legion as part of the imperialist
assault on Somalia, systematically avoids any serious examination of
the history of this region. Instead, it repeats the lie — peddled by the
Bush administration and taken up by Clinton — that Somalia has "no
strategic value" and that the sole reason for the occupation is to feed
starving people.
But from 1870 onwards, following the opening of the Suez Canal,
the Horn of Africa — and Somalia in particular — became the object
of a ferocious struggle among the imperialist powers. Each sought to
establish a position from which it could dominate the Red Sea, the
Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. The Horn of Africa was the object
of intense imperialist interest during the Cold War, when the United
States maintained military bases at various times in Eritrea, Ethiopia
First published in two parts in the Bulletin on December 18, 1992 and January 1, 1993
23

24
and Somalia. Today, when half the world's oil flows through these
waterways, the strategic significance of this region is even more
pronounced. The US Central Command, which is running the
Somalia operation, is the same headquarters which organized the
military onslaught against Iraq in the Persian Gulf war.
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Britain, France
and Italy each established colonies in the area and answered the
resistance of the Somali people with brutality and repression. So
devastating was the British military expedition into Somaliland in
1902-04, for example, that it caused a famine in which thousands of
men, women and children perished.
The onslaught of the imperialist powers resulted in the drawing of
a myriad of artificial borders across the territory inhabited by the
Somali people (as shown on the map, page 69). These divisions, made
without the slightest regard for the interests of the people of the
region, laid the basis for the wars which have wracked the area ever
since. Today Somali-speaking people live in four separate states:
Somalia itself; Djibouti, the tiny former colony of French Somaliland;
eastern Ethiopia (the Ogaden) and northern Kenya.
The Somalis are a people of centuries-old tradition. The ancestors
of the Somali people are said to have lived in this part of Africa more
than 2,000 years ago. The Somalis had extensive trading contacts
with Egypt, the Arabian peninsula and Persia at a time when these
regions were at a higher cultural and economic level than Western
Europe.
Arab penetration along the northern and eastern Somali coasts is
of great antiquity. The earliest documentation — of immigration
from what is now Yemen — dates from the seventh century. By the
eighth to the tenth century, Arab and Persian merchants had set up
trading posts on the coast of east Africa, including at Mombasa in
Kenya, on the island of Madagascar and at Mogadishu, the modern
capital of Somalia.
Over the last 900 years, the tribes which arrived from the Arabian
peninsula gradually moved out of the hilly northern deserts in the
Horn area towards the flatter and more fertile land to the south and
west and then into the semidesert plains of what is now northern
Kenya, displacing the local populations as they went. This migration
continued into the first decades of the twentieth century. Most of the
Somali clans were nomads, but on the southern terrain they practiced
cultivation which they adopted from the original inhabitants.
The Horn of Africa was drawn into the theater of imperialist

competition in 1869, when completion of the Suez Canal opened a
short route to India via the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The port
of Aden, which Britain had seized in 1839, from that time assumed
critical importance. Its garrison drew its meat supply from the
northern Somali coast, the region which would become British
Somaliland.
The opening of the Suez Canal also brought France and Italy into
this part of Africa. In 1862, when the canal was still under construction,
the French purchased the port of Obock, on the northern
Somali coast, from the local clan in order to gain a foothold in the
strategic area south of Suez.
In 1870, an Italian shipping company bought the port of Assab in
Eritrea. Britain, although at first hostile to this move, later came to
view Italian involvement as a counterweight to the French, whose
expansion it regarded as infinitely more threatening.
In the same year, Egyptian troops occupied the northern Somali
coast, remaining there until 1884. Though nominally part of the
Ottoman Empire, Egypt was financially in thrall to British and
French bankers, who virtually controlled its affairs. As with the
Italians, the British initially opposed the Egyptian expansion, but
later accepted it as an alternative to seizure by another colonial
power.
Until 1870, imperialist penetration of Africa proceeded relatively
slowly. Britain, the leading imperial power, had expended considerable
effort to control southern Africa, but her territorial empire in the
hinterland was small. As in China, the Persian Gulf or South America,
a larger "unofficial" empire was maintained through local rulers, who
had learned that they either adapted to the wishes of the British
consul or faced English gunboats.
After 1870, the pace of imperialist penetration suddenly accelerated
and what became known as the "scramble for Africa" began. In
1876, King Leopold II of Belgium set up a private company to exploit
the resources of the Congo and explorers, soldiers and administrators
backed by Germany, France and Italy began making treaties with
tribal rulers. 1
Britain also began to seek the conquest of large tracts
of territory.
Over the next two decades, the entire continent was divided
among a handful of colonial powers. This drive for colonization was
deeply rooted in the economic changes taking place in the major
capitalist countries with the emergence of imperialism. Economic
life was becoming more and more dominated by powerful industrial
25

26
and financial monopolies which vied with each other internationally
for every possible market and source of raw materials and cheap labor.
The brutal methods with which this plunder was carried out are
depicted by Peter Mason in his book Cauchu, the Weeping Wood,
where he quotes a missionary report of the way in which rubber was
collected by King Leopold's company:
"Each town and district is forced to bring in a certain quantity to
the headquarters of the Commissionaire every Sunday. It is collected
by force; the soldiers drive the people into the bush. If they will not
go, they are shot down, and their left hands cut off and taken as
trophies to the Commissionaire ... these hands, the hands of men,
women and children, are placed in rows before the Commissionaire
who counts them to see that the soldiers have not wasted cartridges.
The Commissionaire is paid a commission of about a penny a pound
on all the rubber he gets. It is therefore in his interest to get all the
rubber he can" (p. 54).
While the other imperialist powers attempted to depict the
brutality of Leopold's men as an aberration, Lawrence James, in his
book The Savage Wars makes it clear that Leopold by no means had
the monopoly on violence. He describes the military campaigns
conducted by Britain in Africa between 1870 and 1920 as "an arduous
and brutal struggle in which columns ranged the countryside, burnt
kraals, machine-gunned and stormed stockades and cornered and
overwhelmed resisters in remote caves" (p. 183).
With the exception of the Boers, the descendants of the Dutch
who had settled in the vicinity of the Cape in the seventeenth century,
Britain's African adversaries still relied in pitched battles on weapons
which had rarely been seen on European battlefields since the end of
the Middle Ages: thrusting spears, swords, clubs and bows. If the
native armies of Africa possessed firearms, these, for the most part,
were single-shot, muzzle-loading pieces which had become obsolete
in Europe by 1860.
England, on the other hand, availed herself of the latest in military
technology, utilizing steamships and railways where possible. The
British military was equipped with repeating rifles, which fired up to
eight or nine rounds a minute with accurate ranges of over a mile;
machineguns like the Maxim, which fired 600 every minute, and
shell-firing artillery. The British armies also made use of motor
vehicles and aircraft when they became available.
The ruling classes of Britain and France believed that they had a
"civilizing mission" to fulfill on a world scale. This claim was used to

justify mass slaughter of the native populations. Torture was also
used. The attitude of the British ruling class was summed up by Cecil
Rhodes, who made his fortune in the diamond mines of South Africa. 2
In 1877, Rhodes stated: "We are the first race in the world and... the
more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race."
In 1884, the Egyptian garrisons on the Somali coast were evacuated
and the troops withdrawn to deal with an uprising in the Sudan,
then ruled by Egypt. This led to the direct carve-up of the Somali
territories by the European powers. British troops moved in to take
control of part of the area vacated by Egypt and the French immediately
grabbed Djibouti. France also made a bid for part of the area
claimed by Britain. A potential conflict between the two powers was
averted by a settlement in 1888 which fixed the border of French and
British Somaliland approximately half way between Zeila and Djibouti.
As a result, one clan, the Ise, was divided between the two colonies.
In an attempt to offset the French claims, Britain encouraged Italy
to take over the Eritrean port of Massawa, which had also been
evacuated by the Egyptians, and by February 1885, Italy had proclaimed
a protectorate on the Eritrean coast from Massawa to Assab.
In 1889, the Italians extended their claim into the Horn region,
declaring the coastal terrain along the Indian Ocean to be the
protectorate of Italian Somaliland.
The carve-up of Africa was officially ratified at a conference of the
major colonial powers in Berlin in 1885, hosted by Bismarck. 3
But the
complete subjugation of Africa by the European imperialists — only
Ethiopia (Abyssinia) 4
and Liberia retained even nominal independence
— merely set the stage for new struggles to redivide the vast
tracts of the second largest continent.
For instance, the conference awarded the island of Madagascar to
France in exchange for French concessions to British interests
elsewhere in Africa. France had also acquired holdings in China.
These developments gave France an even greater impetus to establish
a base on the Red Sea route which was now a vital link in her
overseas communications. Moreover, the British authorities at Aden
were refusing to allow French transports to coal there so work began
on the neglected port of Obock to establish an efficient coaling
station.
France did not attempt to extend her direct holdings in the Horn
region further, but worked instead to cultivate good relations with
Ethiopia. The semifeudal regime in Ethiopia was hemmed in by
colonial powers on all sides, but retained some residual indepen-
27

28
dence. In order to win the Ethiopian trade away from the British,
France set about the construction of a rail line from Djibouti to Addis
Ababa to divert traffic from the trade caravans which brought goods
to the Somali coast at Zeila, in the British sector. The rail link, the
only one in the entire region, was completed in 1917 and proved
immensely profitable for France.
The British, for their part, had sought control of the northern
Somali coast largely to prevent any threats to Aden and were unwilling
to commit resources to the new colony. Italy, a late-developing
imperialist power with few colonial possessions, sought to extend to
the maximum the territory under her control in the Horn of Africa.
In an attempt to join its two territories, in the Somali region and in
Eritrea, Italian forces moved west from the Indian Ocean coast into
Somali territory which had never before been conquered by Europeans
and south from Eritrea into territory previously controlled by the
Ethiopian emperor. The westward movement provoked fierce resistance
among many of the Somali clans and tribes. The southern
movement resulted in a conflict with Ethiopia, which culminated in
a humiliating rout for the imperialists in 1896 at the battle of Adowa,
a military debacle for Italy which brought down the government of
Premier Crispi and lingered long in the memory of the rulers in
Rome.
The last piece of Somali-inhabited territory to fall under direct
colonial rule was the northern area of what is now Kenya. Britain
declared an East Africa Protectorate there in 1895, having earlier, in
1887, extracted from the Sultan of Zanzibar a 50-year lease on the
area for the British East Africa Company.
In 1900, a rebellion began among the Somalis which was to last for
20 years. A Moslem leader, Muhammad bin Abdullah Hassan, had
joined the Salihiya Order of the Islamic faith during a visit to Mecca.
His followers became known as the Dervishes, the term "dervish"
being used in Somaliland to refer to the adherents of the Salihiya
Order.
The British perceived in Muhammad's very existence a direct
challenge to their authority. His followers in 1900 numbered more
than 30,000. He had fought the Ethiopians in the Ogaden and was
rapidly gaining influence. Moreover, one of the tenets of the Dervish
movement was to oppose British taxes.
Between 1902 and 1904, the British undertook a series of expeditions
against the new movement which were to involve over 16,000
British, African and Indian troops. They failed to defeat Muhammad,

although their scorched earth policy of destroying crops and livestock
caused a famine in which thousands died.
The British efforts proved so fruitless that a decision was taken in
1912 to abandon the hinterland, which was considered a waste of
money. However, at the end of World War I, with unrest in the
region growing, the British government concluded that a demonstration
of force was necessary.
The operation against the Somali people involved an unprecedented
combination of infantry, naval units and air power. Six DH-
9 fighters were crated to Berbera, and a landing strip prepared as the
Royal Air Force base for the campaign. The aircraft were armed with
machineguns and bombs, 20 pounds of high explosive and 12-pound
incendiaries, which were to be dropped on the Somali forts at
Medishe, Jidali and Taleh. As one writer noted, the methods of mass
slaughter perfected on the Western Front were imported into Africa.
On January 21,1920, the raids began. Special targets were the vast
herds of camels which had been, in previous years, the means by
which Muhammad and his supporters had slipped past the punitive
columns. Jidali and stock grazing close by were bombed. The same
day Medishe was hit.
For the next 14 days further sorties were flown against the forts
and fleeing columns of Somalis were strafed. At the same time, land
forces pursued what was left of Muhammad's army, in cooperation
with the RAF. Two naval landing parties, armed with light
machineguns and hand grenades, stormed Muhammad's coastal fort
at Galibaribur and took it. Finally, the fort at Taleh was reduced to
rubble through bombardment and Muhammad's followers were
dispersed. Many Somalis were killed, although Muhammad himself
managed to escape, to die a natural death within the year.
Far from establishing political stability, the crushing of the rebellion
sowed the seeds of future conflicts in the region. The Ethiopian
government, which had cooperated with the British in defeating
Muhammad, succeeded in strengthening its control over the Somali
clans in the Ogaden. Italy had also played a role in the war against the
Dervishes, whose influence extended into Italian territory as well.
The Italian rulers felt encouraged to continue their attempt to
develop a full-fledged colony, which would serve both as a source of
raw materials and a location whose agricultural potential might be
exploited by settlers from Italy. Land was set aside for Italian colonists
and forced labor was supplied from the Somali population. However,
in 1909 the Italian governor of Somalia, Tommaso Carletti, was
29

30
obliged to report that hostility towards the new colonizers was such
that a European could not venture outside any of the coastal towns
without an escort of armed soldiers with fixed bayonets.
In 1922 Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator, came to power in
Rome and, from this time, Italy embarked on an even more aggressive
colonial policy, intensifying its military operations against an anticolonial
rebellion in Libya and tightening its grip on Somalia. 5
In 192 5,
Mussolini launched a major military operation against the Somalis, in
order to bring the two northern provinces of the Italian protectorate
directly under Italian rule and install garrisons there. Despite the
presence of some 12,000 troops, including three battalions from
Eritrea and a division of marines with naval support and reconnaissance
planes, the resistance of the Somalis lasted almost two years.
Also in 192 5 the Italian protectorate was significantly increased in
size with the cession by Britain of an area previously ruled as part of
Kenya, including the port of Kismayu. This was part of Italy's modest
share of the spoils of World War I. Once again, the new frontier
between Somalia and Kenya was drawn without any consideration of
clan distribution or grazing needs.
By a combination of bribery and aggression, the Italians began to
expand their own influence over some of the clans in the Ogaden
district claimed by Ethiopia. The Ethiopians succeeded in expelling
some of the posts the Italians set up, but in 1934 a clash took place at
Walwal in which the Italians forced the Ethiopians to withdraw.
Futile negotiations followed through the League of Nations. 6
Encouraged
by Britain and France, which sought to satisfy Mussolini's
appetite for colonies and woo him away from Germany, Italy invaded
Ethiopia in October 1935 from both Somalia and Eritrea.
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was one of the most notorious acts
of imperialist violence carried out in the twentieth century and
marked the opening of a new prewar period, which culminated in the
outbreak of World War II in 1939. At the height of the operation,
Italy mobilized 500,000 troops against an Ethiopian army of only tens
of thousands and made widespread use of poison gas and indiscriminate
aerial bombardment.
The mouthpiece for the colonial powers, the League of Nations,
after considerable delay, imposed half-hearted sanctions on Italy,
which were not observed. The US, in particular, continued to supply
much-needed oil to Mussolini. The Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin
played an utterly criminal role. 7
They, too, provided oil to Mussolini
throughout the war until, by May 7,1936, Ethiopia finally fell under

Italian rule.
Following the Italian victory, the full force of the fascist dictatorship
was unleashed in the new colony, Italian East Africa, which
combined Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Interracial marriage was
forbidden and the inhabitants of all three territories were subjected
to institutionalized oppression. They resisted fiercely. In 1937 an
attempt was made to assassinate the Italian governor at Addis Ababa
and a reign of terror followed, with widespread arrests and summary
executions. But the unrest became even more intense until in 1941,
the Italian territories were invaded by a combined force of British and
Ethiopian exile troops. From then on, they were controlled by Britain
until the end of the war.
The Legacy of Imperialist Domination
The carve-up of the Horn of Africa during and after World War
II provides further proof that this imperialist bloodbath was not a war
against fascism or for democracy and self-determination. Like the
first global conflagration which broke out in 1914, World War II was
essentially a struggle among the imperialist powers over control of
markets, colonies and strategic positions.
The main line of the conflict was between the Allied imperialist
powers — the US, Britain and the French exile forces of de Gaulle —
and the Axis powers — Germany, Italy and Japan. 8
But the struggle
for colonial influence went on in a different form within the camps
and political overtures were made from time to time between the
camps. This internecine conflict was especially sharp over the question
of the British and French colonial empires.
In 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter,
which supposedly upheld the right of all peoples to choose their own
government. 9
American imperialism sought to wrap itself in the
mantle of anticolonialism and democracy, intending that her own
commercial interests would fill the gap left by the former colonial
powers. Churchill, for his part, insisted that promises of self-determination
applied only to the conquered nations of Europe, not British
colonies. "We mean to hold our own," he insisted in 1942. "I did not
31

32
become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the
liquidation of the British Empire" (M. Meredith, The First Dance of
Freedom, p. 35).
De Gaulle, too, was determined to maintain French possession of
her colonial territories. In his wartime memoirs, he explained his
strenuous opposition to the armistice which Vichy France had signed
with Hitler, insisting that France must participate in military actions
in order to maintain her colonial possessions and, if possible, extend
them. 10
In relation to East Africa in 1941 he wrote: "France's
positions there were sapped and coveted, and ... there was, on any
hypothesis, no chance of her keeping any of them if, for the first time
in history, she remained passive when everything was in the melting
pot" (Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de
Gaulle, p. 167).
From 1941 onwards, every Somali colony changed hands at least
once. The first was British Somaliland, invaded by Italy early in 1941.
British troops drove Italy back and invaded Ethiopia, Eritrea and
Italian Somaliland. The peoples of these colonies then discovered
that, having been "liberated" from the rule of the Italian fascists by
British imperialism, they were now to be subjected to military
occupation by that same power, an occupation which they strove to
throw off but which remained in place long after the end of the war.
The capture of the Italian colonies by Britain further exacerbated
the conflict among the Allies over who should control what position
in the region. When de Gaulle requested British assistance to take
French Somaliland from the Vichy forces, Britain delayed the action
and finally implemented it only half-heartedly. De Gaulle somewhat
bitterly articulated the British reasoning thus: " 'If,' they probably
thought, 'the competition which has set Great Britain, France and
Italy at loggerheads near the sources of the Nile for the last 60 years
ends in a strictly British triumph; if, when the Italians have been
finally crushed, it is apparent that the French have remained passive
and impotent, what an unparalleled situation England will have
thenceforth in the whole area — Abyssinia, Eritrea, Somaliland, and
the Sudan!'"
The US, for its part, attempted to impose its own solution in which
Djibouti would be controlled neither by Vichy nor de Gaulle. But the
French garrison declared for de Gaulle in November 1942 following
the Anglo-American landings in North Africa.
Tensions also developed between the British and Americans in
Eritrea. The Americans argued that the Allied war effort demanded

the establishment of a US intercept station there to monitor Axis
telecommunications. For Britain, the potential military advantage of
the proposal was outweighed by the danger posed to her interests in
the area from what was by now the strongest of the imperialist
powers. For as long as possible, Churchill opposed the US plan
outright, finally giving permission only reluctantly.
Similar questions were involved in the US decision to extend
Lend-Lease benefits to Ethiopia, which was establishing a commercial
airline. 11
The US hoped in this way to undermine Britain's
control of commercial civil aviation, which threatened the US plans
for the expansion of Pan American Airways' rights in the Middle East.
In 1943, the US even responded favorably to an appeal from Ethiopia
for military assistance to put an end to the British military occupation.
The British vetoed an initial request for 5,000 rifles as a possible
threat to British security in northeastern Africa.
At the end of the war, the conflicts among the victorious imperialists
intensified, as the colonies of the defeated powers were divided
up. Britain, France and, to a lesser extent, Italy had been the principal
beneficiaries of the sharing out of the German colonies in Africa at
the end of World War I. This time, Italy's possessions, including
Italian Somaliland and Eritrea, were among those whose fate was to
be decided by the victors.
Transfer to another colonial power was hampered, however, by
the deep-going crisis of the entire system of colonial rule. Britain had
emerged from the war bankrupt and unable to maintain control of a
far-flung empire, much of which had been conquered by Japan. The
Dutch faced the same problem in Indonesia, the French, in Indo-
China. In China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa,
mass movements were emerging to challenge colonial domination.
The imperialists feared that an uncontrollable revolutionary upsurge
in the colonies would come together with the movement of the
working class in Western Europe, threatening the entire fabric of
capitalist rule.
The victorious imperialist powers, and above all the United States,
which in 1945 exercised virtually unchallenged economic, military
and political hegemony over the affairs of world capitalism, decided
on a change in tactics towards the colonial countries. Self-government
was to replace direct colonial rule for the former colonies. This
policy was written into the charter of the United Nations, the
organization founded in 1945 by the victorious Allies and which, in
the final analysis, gave an international cover to the dictates of US
33

34
imperialism.
Britain and France were forced to concede independence to their
colonies, in some cases on the basis of timetables ranging from a few
years to a decade or more, and in others, only after bloody colonial
wars like those fought by the French in Indochina and Algeria.
The imperialists cultivated the native bourgeoisie in the Asian and
African colonies which, in return for a privileged position for itself,
could be utilized to maintain capitalism. These bourgeois regimes
would systematically suppress the development of independent revolutionary
struggle by the working class. They would also ensure the
subordination of the economy to the imperatives of the world market,
itself dominated by the same handful of imperialist powers which had
directly ruled the colonies. The granting of a nominal independence
became a vital part of the postwar arrangements whereby imperialism
managed to restabilize itself for a period of more than 40 years.
None of this would have been possible without the counterrevolutionary
role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow. In
Western Europe, the bureaucracy, under Stalin, disarmed mass
movements and propped up bourgeois governments in countries like
Italy, France and Greece, where depression, fascism and war had
discredited capitalism in the eyes of broad layers of the population.
In the colonies, the Stalinists systematically betrayed the struggles
of the oppressed masses. Stalinist parties like the French Communist
Party participated in imperialist governments which waged war
against the colonial peoples. The Soviet bureaucracy itself pursued its
narrow nationalist interests, promoting the national bourgeois regimes
in the former colonial countries as the genuine representatives
of the masses and subordinating the working class to such figures as
Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno. 12
Negotiations over the future of the Somali lands opened at the
Potsdam conference in August 1945 and continued in London in
September. 13
Italy, when invited to make a submission, proposed that
all her African colonies be returned to her. France, fearful of independence
movements in her own colonies, supported the Italian position.
Molotov, representing the Soviet bureaucracy, demanded a
Soviet trusteeship for Libya, which had demonstrated its strategic
importance during the war. 14
If this was agreed to, the Stalinists were
prepared to allow Britain and the US to decide the fate of Eritrea and
Italian Somaliland between them.
The US countered the Soviet move with the proposal that the
three colonies be ruled as UN trusteeships, for 10 years in the cases

of Libya and Eritrea, for an unlimited period in the case of Italian
Somaliland. Britain supported the American proposal for Libya, but
reserved comment on Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, hoping that if
Eritrea were eventually handed over to Ethiopia, the latter might be
persuaded to agree to Britain keeping the Ogaden, which was still
occupied by British troops. Ethiopia was at this time seeking control
of both Eritrea and the Ogaden, while Egypt proposed to take over
Eritrea.
Egypt had earlier opened a campaign for the Unity of the Valley
of the Nile, which would unite Ethiopia, Eritrea, French, British and
Italian Somalilands, Kenya and Uganda under Egyptian control. In
order to impose this plan, however, Egypt would have needed the
support of one or more of the imperialist powers. Such support was
not forthcoming, so the plan was dropped, although it was to be
resurrected after Nasser came to power in 1952. 15
None of these powers had the slightest concern for the wishes of
the Somali people, who opposed the restoration of rule by Italy,
Britain or Ethiopia. In 1948, when the formality of consultation was
carried out and a Four Power Commission visited Mogadishu,
violent clashes broke out in which more than 60 people died. The
commission, however, recommended the restoration of Italian rule
in Italian Somaliland, with three of the four commissioners (British,
American and Soviet) urging that Italy be named the administering
authority of a UN trusteeship regime, while France remained in favor
of restoring outright colonial rule. In 1949, when news reached
Mogadishu that the UN General Assembly was discussing the possibility
of the return of Italian rule, riots broke out again and popular
demonstrations were held in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the territory.
The bourgeois nationalist Somali Youth League, which had been
founded in 1943, led the opposition to Italian rule. The SYL called
for national unity, over and above clan divisions, invoking the early
Somali states of the fifteenth century and drawing inspiration from
the ideas of Muhammad bin Abdullah Hassan, who had led the
rebellion against foreign rule at the beginning of the century.
The program of the SYL was the unification of the five Somali
segments in the Italian colony, British Somaliland, French Djibouti,
the Ogaden in Ethiopia, and the British-held Northern Frontier
District in neighboring Kenya. The SYL campaigned for a unification
of the Somali territories under UN mandate with four-power
administration. Abdullahi Issa, the representative of the league,
35

wrote to the United Nations:
"We have repeatedly informed the honorable members of the
Assembly that our people prefer death rather than return to Italian
domination. We are not appeased by the suggestion that Italian
administration in Somaliland will be a Trusteeship under the supervision
of the United Nations."
Despite the mass opposition among the Somali people, the former
Italian colony was declared a UN trust territory in December 1950,
with Italy returning as the administering power for a transitional
period, fixed at 10 years, prior to independence. The Italian administration
was imposed by brute force. Military units were dispatched,
demonstrations and riots were suppressed, and some members of the
SYL were imprisoned. In 1952, Eritrea was merged with Ethiopia at
the instigation of the US, which planned to expand its military
installations there.
During the 1950s, the Italian administrators worked to create a
petty-bourgeois layer among the Somali people to which the government
could be entrusted at the end of the decade. To this end,
administrators were trained and a collaborationist wing of the SYL
was cultivated. This wing was led by Abdullahi Issa, who had written
the impassioned plea to the UN in 1947, but who now became prime
minister of the Italian sector. For the mass of the population,
education continued to be denied and, in 1960, at the time of
independence, the literacy level was only two percent. The British,
for their part, did even less in this regard than the Italians and faced
continuing riots and demonstrations throughout the 1950s, as first
the Ogaden and then the Haud grazing lands were handed over to
Ethiopia.
In 1956, the strategic importance of northeast Africa was once
more highlighted by Britain's and France's invasion of Egypt when
Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. This episode also marked the
establishment of US supremacy in the region, as the Eisenhower
administration compelled Britain and France to withdraw in a public
hurniliation which led to the fall of the Eden government. 16
On July 1, 1960, the UN trust territory became independent. At
the same time, Britain agreed to the independence of British
Somaliland, which had no British settlers and little commercial value.
The two former colonies then merged to form the Somali Republic.
Abdullahi Issa had become too discredited to remain in the post and
was replaced by Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, also of the SYL. French
Somaliland continued to be ruled directly by France until 1977, when

it was renamed the Republic of Djibouti.
The new state, formed by the union of two artificial constructs of
imperialism, embraced little more than half of the Somali people. In
1962, Shermarke indicated the crippling effect of the boundaries
which had been drawn by imperialism, saying:
"Our misfortune is that our neighboring countries, with whom,
like the rest of Africa, we seek to promote constructive and harmonious
relations, are not our neighbors. Our neighbors are our Somali
kinsmen whose citizenship has been falsified by indiscriminate boundary
'arrangements.' They have to move across artificial frontiers to
their pasturelands. They occupy the same terrain and pursue the
same pastoral economy as ourselves. We speak the same language.
We share the same creed, the same culture, and the same traditions.
How can we regard our brothers as foreigners? Of course we all have
a strong and very natural desire to be united."
The legacy of imperialist domination borne by the states which
issued from the independence process was to prove fatal to their
subsequent economic and political development. Dozens of countries
in Africa and Asia — many of them now labeled "failed nations"
by the capitalist media and targeted as candidates for recolonizatdon
— became nominally independent without having any of the prerequisites
for modern life.
Somalia, for instance, was a country with no written language,
where education was almost unobtainable, and the conditions of the
masses had been maintained at the most primitive level. After 7 5 years
of colonial rule, the country was left without railroads or any other
significant economic infrastructure.
The domination of the world market by a few imperialist powers
had long ago blocked the path to economic development of countries
with far greater resources than Somalia. Nor were the richer states of
Africa able to achieve any greater level of economic independence.
The more developed their economies, the further they were integrated
into the world market under imperialist domination. In all
these countries, the successive bourgeois nationalist regimes have
demonstrated their total incapacity to resolve any of the issues facing
the mass of the population.
This was graphically demonstrated in Somalia where, even by
African standards, the bourgeoisie was exceptionally weak. At the
time of independence, about 80 percent of Somalia's estimated
population of three million were nomads. The remainder were
cultivators along the southern rivers or, between 5 to 10 percent, were
37

38
residents of towns. In the first two decades following independence,
the small working class, employed in mining, manufacturing, construction
and power, grew to 8.4 percent of the population.
The administrators of the new Somali state were drawn from the
very small fraction of the population, perhaps one percent, who had
mastered Italian and English and who enjoyed a privileged status.
From the start, the interests of this thin bourgeois and pettybourgeois
stratum conflicted with those of the masses of the population,
for which independence meant above all the hope for a significant
improvement in living conditions.
Basil Davidson, in his book, The Black Man's Burden —Africa and
the Curse of the Nation-State, notes, "Among the mass of rural and
urban supporters of the anticolonial movements, there was small sign
of any developing loyalty or attachment to this or that colony-turnednation.
What the multitudes wanted, by all the evidence, was not a
flag for the people or an anthem for the people, nearly so much as they
wanted bread for the people, and health and schools for the people....
The jubilant crowds celebrating independence were not inspired by
a 'national consciousness' that 'demanded the nation'.... They were
inspired by the hope of more and better food and shelter" (p. 185).
Far from beginning to fulfill the social aspirations of the masses,
the new ruling elites engaged in a bitter rivalry for control of the
resources within the country, made all the more intense by the fact
that those resources were in such short supply. The parliament was
modeled on the Italian system of proportional representation, which
had been adopted in Rome after the defeat of the fascist government.
In Somalia, the corruption which is endemic in bourgeois democracy
quickly discredited the parliament, which had become "a sordid
market place where deputies traded their votes for personal rewards"
(I.M. Lewis, author of The Modern History of Somalia, quoted in
Davidson). According to Lewis, the deputies "were ferried about in
sumptuous limousines bearing the magic letters AN (Assemblea
Nazionale) which the inveterate poor of the capital translated with
bitter humor as anna nolahay — 'I'm all right, Jack' " (Ibid.).
This antagonism of interests between the rulers of Somalia and the
mass of the people affected every aspect of government policy.
Throughout the 1960s, the Gross National Product rose only one
percent per year, and the opposition between the interests of the rural
districts and the interests of the cities, where effective political power
resided, deepened. As a state bureaucracy began to develop, it acted
as a further drain on the economy. The class character of the

government placed its stamp not least upon the way in which it went
about attempting to achieve the goal it had set for itself, that is, the
political unification of the Somali people throughout the region.
The government first appealed to the rising national leaders in
other African colonies for assistance in settling the issue. In 1962, on
the eve of Kenyan independence, for instance, the Somali government
invited Jomo Kenyatta, the head of the leading Kenyan African
nationalist party, to Mogadishu for informal talks. 17
Kenyatta had
until recently been imprisoned for his opposition to British rule in
Kenya, but he firmly opposed the unification of the Somali people in
the Northern Frontier District with Somalia. Kenyatta made it clear
to the Somali regime that he regarded the NFD an inalienable part
of Kenya.
This was to be the attitude adopted by the vast majority of the
African nationalists, who proved to be staunch defenders of the
colonial boundaries. Britain, too, proclaimed that the NFD would
remain part of Kenya after independence.
This failure of the government to secure political support for
Somali unification had a profound impact on subsequent events. In
1963, Somalia broke relations with Kenya and Britain, while tension
began to mount with Ethiopia as well over its control of the disputed
territory of the Ogaden. Addis Ababa was being supplied with
military aid by the US, so Somalia sought concomitant support
wherever it could find it. In November 1963, Somalia accepted
military aid worth nearly $30 million from the Soviet Union, having
rejected a smaller offer of Western aid. The following year the
dispute with Ethiopia led to fighting for the first time, and Somalia
signed further agreements with the Soviet Union.
In June 1967, Ali Shermarke became president of Somalia and
Mohammed Hadji Ibrahim Egal, prime minister. Egal, was the leader
of the Somali National Movement, which had been the main Somali
party in British Somaliland. The following year, diplomatic relations
with Kenya and Britain were resumed, but relations with Ethiopia
deteriorated further with the growth of the Western Somali Liberation
Front, which was contesting Ethiopia's control of the Ogaden.
In October 1969, Shermarke was assassinated. One week later, the
army seized control in a coup, and Mohammed Siad Barre, the head
of the armed forces, proclaimed the Somali Democratic Republic.
Davidson describes the events leading up to the coup in these
terms: "Presented as a multiparty system with the highest credentials,
the constitution had led directly and indeed logically to a one-party

40
system which was in fact a no-party system. Offered as the framework
for a unified nation, it had transformed Somali unity into dozens of
quarreling and useless factions. Argued as the basis for a Somali
capitalism, it had ended in a mere system of payola. Only between
January and October 1969, Prime Minister Egal is credibly said to
have paid out some half a million pounds to parliamentary clients
from a treasury desperately short of cash. When the army moved in
and stopped this carnival, not a single life had to be taken. That
moment, on the contrary, was one of widespread satisfaction" (Ibid.,
p. 321).
The military regime nationalized foreign interests, such as the oilmarketing
companies, and further developed relations with the
USSR. (The largest Soviet military base outside the Warsaw Pact
countries was established at Berbera on the Red Sea.) On this basis,
Siad Barre announced in 1970 that Somalia had become a socialist
state. In one of the poorest countries in the world, where the mass of
the population still lived a nomadic existence, this claim was not only
patently spurious. It was even somewhat grotesque. Moreover, it
highlighted the fraudulent nature of the many other such claims
being advanced at this time by the heads of bourgeois nationalist
regimes, in Africa and elsewhere. The national bourgeoisie was
everywhere proving incapable of providing a solution to any of the
problems facing the masses and many regimes resorted to such tactics
in an attempt to shore up their rule. These regimes became more and
more repressive as popular dissatisfaction grew. Even more criminal
was the boosting of such claims by the Moscow bureaucracy, which,
in the case of Somalia, greatly expanded its influence in the early years
of Barre's rule.
The Siad Barre regime began by consolidating its hold on power
through a campaign against corruption. This was followed by a
process grandiosely entitled "democratizing the state." This turned
out to mean the decentralization of some government powers and the
construction of a political network which gave the ruling party
control over even the remotest districts.
Barre claimed that the "democratization of political power is the
only way to interrupt the course of capitalism and to develop our
national productive forces, with the people becoming participants in
the political and economic management of the nation." But despite
the rhetoric, Somalia remained a capitalist country and the reforms
enacted did not go beyond elementary democratic questions —
developing a Latin alphabet for written Somali, a campaign which

aised the rate of literacy to 60 percent, and the changeover to Somali
as the language of state administration.
In September 1974, the Ethiopian emperor was overthrown in a
military coup and replaced by a military council known as the Dergue
(Shadow). 18
The Dergue also employed radical-sounding rhetoric,
proclaiming a "socialist state" based on "Marxism-Leninism." But
Ethiopia remained a semifeudal and economically backward country
under the rule of a tiny economic elite. Especially after the assumption
of unchallenged power within the Dergue by Lt. Col. Mengistu
Haile Mariam in February 1977, the regime moved ruthlessly to
suppress all opposition from workers, students and oppressed nationalities
like the Eritreans and Somalis. 19
The guerrilla warfare in Eritrea, under way since 1962, flared into
open civil war and half the Ethiopian army was sent to attempt to deal
with it. Other armed rebellions broke out in the Ogaden and in Tigre
province. Believing the situation opportune, the WSLF launched a
military offensive in the Ogaden in July 1977 and, with the help of
Somali government forces, made considerable inroads into Ethiopia.
This brought the Somali regime face to face with the utter
cynicism of its patrons in the Soviet bureaucracy. In December 1976,
the Dergue had signed a secret military agreement with Moscow and
with the outbreak of war in both Eritrea and the Ogaden, the
Ethiopian regime appealed for massive Soviet military aid.
The Stalinists airlifted a gigantic amount of aircraft, tanks, transport
equipment and munitions to Ethiopia, together with aviators,
Soviet officers and 17,000 Cuban troops. The aid eventually amounted
to $2 billion. The Barre regime responded by breaking relations with
the Soviet Union in November 1977. By early 1978 its military forces
were routed and it was forced to withdraw from the Ogaden.
The Soviet bureaucracy considered that the price of having to
leave Somalia was more than compensated for by the increase of its
influence in Ethiopia, a far larger and richer country, with a highly
strategic position on the shores of the Red Sea and at the straits of Bab
el Mandeb.
US imperialism moved quickly to fill the breach left by the
withdrawal of support from the Soviet Union. Siad Barre, the selfstyled
"socialist," became enrolled among the allies of the "free
world." Washington became his principal sponsor and for the next
decade, armed and financed his regime.
In the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, the US efforts to establish bases in the Middle East were
41

42
intensifying. The US had closed its installation at Kagnew, in Eritrea,
the previous year, at the end of its 2 5-year lease, and withdrawn to
bases elsewhere in the region and in the Indian Ocean. In return for
radar, trucks and nonmilitary aircraft, the Somali regime granted the
Carter administration in 1980 the use of the former Soviet naval
installation at Berbera. In 1982, Barre obtained a further increase in
aid from the Reagan administration after an official visit to Washington.
In 1985, the situation in Somalia worsened dramatically, when a
famine in Ethiopia drove hundreds of thousands of refugees across
the border into Somalia, an estimated 440,000 of whom were still
there in February 1991. But the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank insisted that stringent austerity measures be inflicted
on the people so that loans would be repaid. In 1987, Siad Barre
rejected the conditions which the IMF was placing on further loans
and, from then on, foreign aid to Somalia was drastically cut. The
Barre regime then imposed its own austerity measures, which were
received with great hostility throughout the country.
Barre also found himself losing control over the armed forces, as
he confronted growing opposition from a multiplicity of armed
groups .Inl987,heenteredintoan agreement with Ethiopia in which
he officially abandoned any claim to the Ogaden. This provoked a
rebellion by the Somali National Movement which seized substantial
territory. The SNM derived most of its support from the Somali
Isaak people, who had been forced out of Ethiopia. The US sent guns
to assist the government in putting down the SNM rebellion, and in
August 1987 conducted joint military exercises in Somalia between
US and Somali troops.
Washington's principal interest in Somalia had been as a bastion
against the influence of the Soviet Union in the region and, as the
USSR under Gorbachev abandoned its clients in Africa and prepared
to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Reagan administration became
less concerned with propping up the beleaguered Siad Barre regime.
20
In 1988, the State Department ordered a halt in aid to
Somalia, using human rights violations as the pretext. This was the
beginning of the end.
Barre failed to crush the SNM and, by 1990, faced rebellion by a
number of other groups as well, including the United Somali Congress,
created in 1989, and the Somali Patriotic Movement, which
was active on the border with Kenya. Largely clan-based, these
groups were as incapable of addressing the problems of the masses in

Somalia as the regime they opposed. In mid-August 1990, the USC,
the SNM and the SPM coordinated their separate military campaigns
to overthrow the regime and, on January 27,1991, Barre fled, first to
Kenya, than to Nigeria.
The USC took power in Mogadishu and immediately invited all
opposition groups to participate in a national conference. Ali Mahdi
Mohamed, who had been president for a time in the 1960s, was
appointed temporary president. The SNM, which prevailed in the
north of the country, and the SPM, which controlled the south,
opposed his appointment and demanded his resignation. In May, the
SNM formed an administration to govern the former territory of
British Somaliland and seceded from Somalia, declaring a new state,
the Republic of Somaliland. In Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi also faced
opposition within the USC from Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid, the
movement's military commander, whose forces seized the southern
part of the city.
Inconclusive fighting between the rival clan-based factions has
continued for the past two years, destroying much of what remains of
economic life and agriculture. As a result of this catastrophe, an
unknown number of people have died. In early 1992, some 200,000
people were living in refugee camps around Mogadishu, and it was
estimated that millions were threatened by famine. On March 3,
1992, a cease-fire was signed between Aidid and Ali Mahdi, but by
then mass starvation had gripped much of the southern half of the
country.
The major imperialist powers have seized on the tragedy of
Somalia as an opportunity to initiate the most dramatic change in
policy toward the oppressed countries of Asia and Africa since the
Second World War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
imperialists no longer feel the need to pay lip service to democracy
and sovereignty in the former colonial countries. Driven by their own
deepening economic crisis, and the reemergence of the same
interimperialist antagonisms which produced World War I and
World War II, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan
and Italy are seeking to revive forms of direct colonial rule and once
again carve up large portions of the globe for their exclusive domination.
The return to colonialism is being carried out under cover of a
propaganda barrage about concern over the fate of starving people in
Somalia. But most of the Somalis in immediate danger of famine were
allowed to starve to death over the last 12 months, while the UN
43

44
Security Council, the Bush administration and the other imperialist
governments stood by and ignored the mass suffering.
The role of the US government is the most cynical of all. Having
armed and financed the brutal dictatorship of Siad Barre and justified
its crimes against the Somali people, the Bush administration stood
back and allowed it to collapse, then used the ensuing chaos to justify
military occupation of the country. US imperialism is itself directly
responsible for the catastrophe of famine, disease and widespread
violence from which it was initially claimed that the US Marines were
"saving" the Somali people.
In addition to tens of thousands of US troops, Somalia has been
occupied by soldiers of the French Foreign Legion, 2,000 troops
from Italy, the former colonial power, and thousands of troops from
14 other countries. Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced that German
imperialism, which once aspired to an East African empire
centered on Tanganyika, would send 1,500 soldiers to Somalia.
The bourgeois nationalist regimes in countries such as Pakistan,
Nigeria and Zimbabwe have also supplied troops to give an international
cover to the revival of naked imperialist colonialism. No longer
able to maneuver between imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy,
the bourgeois governments in the former colonial countries have
abandoned even the semblance of independence from the foreign
policy of imperialism.
The catastrophe now engulfing Somalia is the product of its whole
history of imperialist exploitation, in which the US has played a
critical role. Capitalism in crisis is once more turning to the most
barbaric methods to reestablish its unchallenged domination of the
world.
This has far-reaching implications for workers in the United
States and throughout the world, for the same methods are to be used
against the resistance of the working class to the dictates of crisisstricken
capitalism in every country. The fate of Somalia and of all
humanity depends upon the development of the international socialist
proletariat, alone capable of opening the way to genuine independence
for the oppressed masses.

Chronology of Events
1869 Opening of the Suez Canal
1870 Egyptian forces occupy Somalia
1884 Withdrawal of Egypt; Britain and France
establish Somaliland protectorates
1889 Italy establishes Somaliland protectorate
1900 Britain begins military campaign in Somaliland
1920 Defeat of Somali rebellion by the British
1925 Mussolini begins military campaign against Somalis
1935 Italy invades Ethiopia from bases in Somaliland
1941 Britain invades Italian Somaliland
1950 Italian rule restored under UN Trust Territory
1960 British and Italian Somaliland unite
to form Republic of Somalia
1969 Mohammed Siad Barre seizes power in a military coup
1977-78 War with Ethiopia over Ogaden; Siad Barre breaks alliance
with Soviet Union, opens relations with United States
1991 Collapse of Siad Barre regime
45

The Ugly Face of US Colonialism
It is now more than six weeks since the invasion of Somalia by over
20,000 American troops. Operation Restore Hope was launched with
great fanfare in the weeks before Christmas, sold to the American
people as a humanitarian mission to rescue the starving Somalis.
Sufficient time has passed for the glow of the media's propaganda
barrage to fade and for a sober judgement to be made about the real
character of this military operation.
Reports from this African nation reveal a daily toll of Somali
civilians killed and wounded by the US occupation force. In what
amounted to a cold-blooded massacre, US helicopter gunships and
Belgian paratroopers mounted an assault on the compound of one
Somali faction in the southern port of Kismayu on Monday, leaving
scores of people dead and wounded.
The Pentagon arrogantly dismisses questions about the number of
Somali killed by its forces. It is no longer "in the business of body
counts." For its part, the capitalist media has shown no interest in the
issue. It remains the Pentagon's loyal publicity agent.
One revealing report did appear, however, in Monday's Washington
Post under the headline: "In Shootouts with Somalis, Americans'
Word Is Law." The article cites numerous incidents in which
innocent Somali civilians have been gunned down by marines in the
streets of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It states that the Pentagon's
rules of engagement have given "the soldiers on the streets far more
First published in the Bulletin on January 29, 1993
47

48
leeway in determining whether and when to shoot than American
soldiers have ever been granted outside of traditional combat zones."
In most cases, the Post notes, the bodies of Somalis killed or
wounded are simply left lying in the street. Patrols which carry out
such killings quickly retreat to avoid confrontations with angry
crowds. There is never any attempt to verify whether or not those
shot had posed any genuine threat to the US troops or, indeed,
whether they had even been armed.
Marine Col. F.M. Lorenz, the chief legal adviser to the US
command in Somalia, defended the US policy, declaring, "If we had
to wait until we are absolutely sure he had a weapon before we pull the
trigger, that would be too late." He added that US military officials
ask few questions of soldiers involved in such killings, declaring,
"That would tend to inhibit their future actions."
The newspaper cites growing anger among Somalis over the
routine killing of civilians. "You can kill unarmed people and you are
not giving us compensation," Hussein Musal, a Somali working for
the British relief group, Save the Children Fund, declared. "It's up to
the Americans to say, 'We thought he was a threat because he was
raising his hand.' There is no international monitoring. It's like
colonialism."
Precisely. Whatever happened to the "rescue mission," to "restoring
hope" and feeding the starving children? Are they being fed?
What have the daily killings in Mogadishu and Kismayu to do with
providing food for the hungry? The capitalist media, which exploited
the images of the refugee camps in the early days of the US intervention,
now no longer even bothers mentioning the plight of Somalia's
famine victims.
The real character of the Somali intervention is emerging with
crystal clarity. It is a brutal imperialist intervention and part of the
drive to recolonize Africa.
The military intervention launched in the Horn of Africa under
the pretext of "rescuing" famine victims is only one of a growing
number of US military interventions being carried out or being
prepared all around the world. In the Persian Gulf, the Clinton
administration continues military provocations against Iraq and the
US military buildup in the region has steadily accelerated. Demands
appear virtually daily in the capitalist press for the overthrow of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein.
The Clinton administration is conducting a complete review of
US policy in relation to the civil war in Bosnia. There is open

discussion of US military intervention under conditions in which
sensational US intelligence reports citing the existence of Serbian
prison camps are leaked to the press with the clear aim of preparing
public opinion for such action.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal Monday published an article
on the debate within the Clinton White House on Cuba, reporting
that the new administration is considering the possibility of invading
the Caribbean island nation.
The intervention into Somalia is part of this worldwide explosion
of US militarism. It was launched not as some sudden humanitarian
reaction to the suffering of the Somali people — a tragedy which is
itself the product of more than a century of imperialist domination
and colonialism in the region — but as part of a deliberate plan to
assert US imperialist control over a vitally strategic area of the globe.
The American working class must join with its class brothers and
sisters in Somalia and internationally in a resolute struggle against
imperialist war and colonialism. The demand must be made for the
immediate withdrawal of US and all imperialist troops from Somalia.
49

Imperialism's Drive
to Reenslave Africa
It is now two months since Washington launched its Operation
Restore Hope. In a dispatch buried by the capitalist press last week,
it was reported that hundreds of Somali youths battled US troops in
the port of Mogadishu, confronting combat-equipped marines with
stones and their bare hands. The youth set up barricades of burning
tires, following the latest of many incidents in which US forces shot
and killed Somalis.
The US military intervention in Somalia was begun with great
fanfare and supported by a media campaign exploiting heart-wrenching
images of starving Somali children and touting the supposed
humanitarian capacities of the Pentagon. With each passing day,
however, Restore Hope emerges more clearly as a dirty colonial
occupation, part of imperialism's resubjugation of the African continent.
In the first days of the US invasion of Somalia, the Bulletin rejected
the official propaganda portraying it as a "humanitarian mission." In
the issue of December 11, 1992, we wrote: "The American invasion
of Somalia marks the onset of a new imperialist drive to carve up
Africa and the rest of the former colonial world. The countries of
Africa and Asia which achieved political independence after World
War II from the old colonial empires of Europe are once again to be
First published in the Bulletin on February 12, 1993
51

52
placed under foreign military rule."
This analysis is being vindicated not only by the evolution of the
US occupation in Somalia, but by tumultuous events shaking the
entire African continent.
In Zaire, the regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko faces its
greatest crisis in its 27-year rule. Following clashes between rival
army factions in the capital of Kinshasa, Mobutu announced the
dismissal ofhis main political rival, Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi,
who in turn has appealed for intervention by foreign troops to
"restore order."
In Brussels, diplomats representing what are known as Zaire's
"creditor nations" held emergency meetings and issued an ultimatum
demanding that Mobutu "transfer authority to the transitional government."
Reviewing the recent events in Zaire, the diplomatic note
signed by the United States, France and Belgium declared, "These
developments have brought Zaire to the brink of political and
economic collapse, and are subjecting Zairians to unbearable hardships."
These nations now posing as the champions of democracy and the
guardians of the Zairian people are fully responsible for the crisis
wracking the African nation. France and Belgium were the original
colonial conquerors of the Congo, out of which Zaire was formed.
Between them, they were responsible for the murder and enslavement
of millions of Africans, while they plundered the land for its rich
mineral wealth. For its part, Washington served as the principal
backer of Mobutu for the last quarter century, valuing him as the
CIA's chief asset on the African continent and using Zaire as a base
for counterrevolutionary operations and proxy wars throughout
southern Africa.
French and Belgian troops are already deployed in Kinshasa for
the ostensible purpose of evacuating foreigners. While diplomats
refused to comment on the meeting in Brussels, it is clear that military
intervention to assert direct imperialist control over Zaire and its vast
deposits of diamonds, copper, cobalt and other minerals is being
prepared.
In Angola, the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos
charged this week that South Africa, Zaire and other foreign elements
are intervening in support of the rebel UNITA forces led by Jonas
Savimbi, who resumed a 16-year civil war after his defeat in last
September's UN-sponsored elections.
While the South African apartheid regime and the Mobutu regime

in Zaire have dismissed Angolan charges, confirmed reports of
foreign involvement came from expatriate oil workers in the oilproducing
center of Soyo, who reported that contingents of combatequipped
non-Angolan whites entered the town with UNITA forces
to seize oil installations.
In Liberia, reports emerged this week that fire had engulfed the
world's largest rubber plantation, owned by Bridgestone Corp. The
report, following heavy fighting between Liberian rebels and a West
African force, appeared aimed at provoking an imperialist intervention.
The New York Times, in an article last Sunday which clearly
reflected the views of the US State Department, listed 48 world
"trouble spots," including 18 on the African continent. The article
cited unnamed US officials who "suggest that the United Nations
should go even further and in effect run countries that have failed to
control their disparate forces from within. Such a role would revive
the concept of United Nations trusteeships, an instrument employed
after World War II to administer former colonies until they were
ready for independence."
While the old system of trusteeships served the imperialist powers
as a means of delaying and controlling the decolonization process,
what is now proposed is an instrument for recolonizing the masses of
Africa and the rest of the oppressed regions of the world.
This move toward recolonization is a direct product of the
insoluble crisis of world capitalism. Confronted with global recession,
stagnating trade and mounting interimperialist conflicts, all of
the imperialist powers are driven to assert direct control over sources
of cheap labor, raw materials and markets.
53

U.S. Massacre In Mogadishu
The massacre of unarmed civilians in Mogadishu this week has
ripped the humanitarian mask off the US military intervention
in Somalia.
Less than three months after being dispatched to the African
nation for the supposed purpose of feeding starving children, US
troops have gunned down Somali youth demonstrating against
colonialism and chanting "US Out of Somalia!"
The carnage in the streets of the Somali capital has clearly exposed
the criminal character of the US operation. American imperialism
and the Clinton administration stand indicted for waging a colonialstyle
war of conquest and oppression against a poor and defenseless
people.
After three days of clashes in the Somali capital, the death toll is
unknown. US officials initially claimed that marines and other
imperialist troops had only fired warning shots and were not responsible
for any casualties.
Col. Fred Peck, the spokesman for the US occupation forces, was
forced to admit Thursday that US forces had fired into the Somali
demonstrators. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were casualties
because we did engage the Somalis," the American colonel declared
arrogantly. "We could not confirm any dead or wounded because the
wounded would have been on the side of those who were being
aggressive toward American soldiers."
First published in the Bulletin on February 26, 1993
55

56
The massacre did not end with the mass demonstrations. On
Thursday morning Mogadishu was rocked by constant and rapid
gunfire, much of it from heavy weapons. Col. Peck confirmed that US
forces were laying siege to a large part of the city. "We are conducting
a sweep of the area from where we detected gunfire in the morning,"
he declared. "We have cordoned off the area." There is no doubt that
such a house-to-house "search and destroy" mission will result in a far
higher death toll.
Mogadishu's streets were filled Wednesday with young Somali
men and women who set up roadblocks of burning tires and debris
throughout the capital. Crowds attacked the US, French and Egyptian
embassies and confronted combat-equipped marines and US
tanks with stones, sticks and their bare hands. They also turned their
wrath against the mission of the United Nations, which has provided
an international fig leaf for the US operation, and the hotel housing
the Western press, which has systematically bed about the events in
their country.
US officials have attempted to dismiss this popular uprising as the
outcome of a dispute between two rival "warlords." The upheavals in
Mogadishu came in the wake of fighting Monday between rival
militias in the southern port of Kismayu and public broadcasts by the
leader of one of the factions, Mohamed Farah Aidid, denouncing US
policy.
While Aidid's statements may have served as a spark for the
demonstrations, their real source lies in the opposition of the Somali
people to the attempt by US imperialism to subject them to a new
form of colonialism. The limited scenes of the demonstrations
broadcast on US television made this clear. Youth advanced under
fire from US troops carrying banners with slogans denouncing the
"recolonizatdon" of Somalia and demanding the removal of foreign
forces.
This is no mere phrase for the people of Somalia. For them, like
the masses throughout Africa, colonialism is a matter of bitter
experience of generations of workers and oppressed. More than a
century of colonial rule and economic plunder by the European
powers and the subsequent US-sponsored wars and counterrevolutions
have left their scars throughout the continent. The killings in
Mogadishu are only the latest in a long line of atrocities committed
by imperialism against the African peoples.
The sheer scope of the demonstrations proved that they expressed
something far more fundamental than a factional dispute between

ival militia leaders. As The New York Times indicated on Thursday,
US officials are by no means optimistic that mediation between these
leaders can halt the resistance of the Somali people: "Though
General Aidid appeared conciliatory in his radio broadcast tonight,
it was uncertain whether the chaos unleashed today could be contained
in the coming days."
The big business media has imposed what amounts to a semiblackout
on the news from Mogadishu. Having played such a big part
in selling the US invasion of Somalia as a "humanitarian mission" at
the outset, the media either says nothing or cynically parrots the lies
handed out by the Pentagon in order to disguise the meaning of these
events. This self-censorship by the capitalist press reflects the unanimity
of the American capitalist ruling class in support of
Washington's military onslaught against a defenseless people.
Workers, however, should pose certain pointed questions. How is
it that a humanitarian relief operation to feed the starving has turned
into a bloody massacre of unarmed civilians demonstrating against
foreign occupation? Why have thousands of Somali youth risen up
and hurled themselves against the US troops and tanks which were
supposedly sent to help them? Neither the official US spokesmen nor
the capitalist media offer any explanations.
From the outset, Operation Restore Hope represented not an act
of humanitarian relief, but a brutal violation of the sovereignty of the
Somali people. The US invasion came six months after the worst of
Somalia's famine was over and under conditions in which the horrific
suffering of the Somali people had already begun to abate.
The pretense of feeding the starving was used to launch a longprepared
occupation of the Horn of Africa, a region with vital
strategic significance for US imperialism and its drive to control the
oil wealth and sea lanes of the Middle East and the vast mineral
resources of Africa.
Within the initial 24 hours of the US invasion, American troops
had claimed their first Somali civilian casualties. These killings have
continued and intensified as the occupation has dragged on. The
Pentagon refuses to account for these deaths. As the military brass
puts it, "we're no longer in the business of body counts." The
capitalist media, for its part, is indifferent to the suffering of the
Somalis. Only a very few of these daily incidents ever find their way
into television or newspaper reports.
Last Saturday, The New York Times published an account of the
killing of a 13-year-old boy who was shot to death by a US marine
57

58
riding on the back of a military truck. The boy, who stood at a
roadside stand 20 feet from the truck, was killed after he casually
pointed at the marine. When the boy's family approached US
authorities to recover his body, they were treated like criminals. The
dead youth's mother was quoted as saying of the US troops, "The way
these men are acting, they aren't solving problems, they're creating
them. It's our fault. We asked them to come."
In an incident earlier this month, a marine shot and killed two
children who had allegedly stolen food from the back of a truck.
Last Saturday, a US marine shot and killed a Somali worker who
was part of a group attempting to organize a strike at a construction
site near the Mogadishu airport.
It is this daily toll of dead and wounded suffered by a people under
the jackboot of foreign military occupation which finally led to the
explosion of popular anger in the streets of Mogadishu this week.
Meanwhile, the political and economic affairs of the Somali
people are dictated by the US "special envoy" Robert Oakley. A
veteran of US operations in Vietnam, Lebanon and Afghanistan,
Oakley personifies the "ugly American" imperialist proconsul, contemptuously
dismissing the will of the Somali people, while ordering
killings and repression to further the aims of the US occupation.
Even before the first US troops landed, the Bulletin warned
against the "hypocritical and cynical media barrage which depicts the
invasion as a noble act of humanitarian aid to the starving Somali
people."
In its December 4 statement entitled "Why is the US Invading
Somalia?" the Bulletin editorial board said: "No government official
has even attempted to clarify why a 30,000-strong force backed by
ships, attack helicopters and bombers is required to insure the
delivery of food supplies. Nor have they explained why American
troops are to be stationed at key locations throughout the country,
even though only a portion of southern Somalia is affected by the
famine." The real purposes of this deployment have now become
clear.
Dismissing Washington's "humanitarian" pretenses, the Bulletin
declared: "The White House and Pentagon interest in Somalia is
based on the strategic importance of this region to the economic,
military and geopolitical interests of American imperialism."
We further warned that the intervention would provoke resistance
from the Somali people: "The adventure in Somalia will no
more solve the crisis of American capitalism than did the massacre

carried out by the US in Iraq. Far from restoring imperialist 'stability,'
it will ultimately fuel the flames of popular revolt against
colonial-style oppression throughout Africa." This prognosis is being
dramatically confirmed in the streets of Mogadishu.
There is no end in sight for this occupation. Even after the
proposed transfer of military forces in Somalia to a UN command,
5,000 US troops are to remain indefinitely on the ground. Meanwhile,
a "rapid deployment force" of marines, tanks, attack helicopters
and other war planes is to be kept in ships off shore, ready to
intervene.
Anyone still harboring illusions about the "humanitarian" motives
of this intervention should ask themselves: What role can such a force
possibly play in feeding the hungry? Its sole conceivable purpose is
the bloody suppression of an uprising by the Somali people.
The blood shed in the streets of Mogadishu is on the hands of Bill
Clinton. The intervention in Somalia, like earlier US invasions and
wars of aggression in Grenada, Panama and Iraq, was carried out with
the bipartisan support of Democrats and Republicans.
Clinton, who was inaugurated as president in the midst of US
bombings in Iraq and the occupation of Somalia by tens of thousands
of US troops, fully endorsed the militarism of the Bush administration
and has continued the interventions which it began.
The antiwar protester of the 1960s has exerted every effort to
prove himself even more aggressive than Bush in the use of military
force to defend the interests of US imperialism abroad.
Even as this aggression erupts in the massacre in Mogadishu, the
Clinton administration is embarking on another military intervention
under the cover of a humanitarian mission — this time in the
Balkans. The proposed airdrop of relief supplies to Bosnia is motivated
not by a desire to reduce the suffering of the Yugoslav people,
but to create the conditions for a provocation which will allow direct
US intervention into the region.
The source of the eruption of US militarism lies in the profound
economic crisis of American and world capitalism. Mired in a global
recession, beset by sharpening trade conflicts with its imperialist
rivals and confronting the worst domestic social crisis since the 1930s,
the American capitalist ruling class and its political representatives,
Democratic and Republican alike, have turned to a desperate policy
of military aggression. It is seeking to use America's remaining
military superiority to offset its economic decline.
American capitalism's aim is to assert hegemony over world
59

60
markets, raw materials and sources of cheap labor at the expense of
its capitalist rivals. This road leads inevitably to a bloody catastrophe
for American capitalism and ultimately to a new imperialist war.
There are vital political lessons for the American working class in
the turn of events in Mogadishu. The criminal intervention in
Somalia was carried out under the cover of a full-scale propaganda
barrage in the capitalist media, promoting a colonial occupation as a
humanitarian rescue operation. Like all US military interventions, it
enjoyed the unqualified backing of the big business stooges in the
trade union bureaucracy.
These methods are not reserved solely for foreign interventions.
The same elements are being brought into play in promoting the
Clinton administration's deficit reduction plan, which is being sold
by the media and the labor bureaucracy as a program to create jobs
and improve the living standards of American workers. This is just as
big a lie as the claim that US troops were sent to Somalia to feed the
hungry. Both at home and abroad, it is the interests of profit, not of
people, which determine the policy of the capitalist ruling class and
its government.
It is impossible to defend jobs, living standards and basic rights at
home without rejecting the perspective of defending the "national
interest" of American imperialism abroad.
American workers must join with their class brothers and sisters in
Somalia in demanding the immediate withdrawal of all US and other
imperialist troops from that country.
The only answer to the worldwide eruption of militarism and the
attacks on the working class at home lies in forging the international
unity of workers in every country in the struggle for socialism. This
is the revolutionary program and perspective fought for by the
Workers League and our co-thinkers in the International Committee
of the Fourth International.

•
Notes
Why Is the US Invading Somalia?
1. battleship Maine — A US vessel blown up in Havana harbor
February 15,1898. This was the pretext utilized by the US to provoke
a war with Spain, which was blamed for the incident, in which 260
men died. President McKinley presented Spain with an ultimatum,
some of the terms of which were actually being implemented when
the US Congress declared war on April 25. The Treaty of Paris
(December 10,1898) ended Spanish rule in Cuba and the US gained
the islands of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
The Return to Colonialism
1. Lenin, Vladimir Eyich (Ulyanov) (1870-1924) — The leader
of the October 1917 Revolution and of the first workers state.
Together with Trotsky, he was one of the two greatest revolutionary
Marxist leaders of the twentieth century. He applied Marxism to the
modern epoch in developing the theory of the revolutionary vanguard
party, necessary for the proletariat to seize power. He fought
for the understanding that scientific socialism had to be brought into
the labor movement from outside the day-to-day, economic struggles
in a conflict with the spontaneous consciousness of the working class.
Lenin developed the Marxist analysis of imperialism as the final stage
of capitalism, the epoch of wars and revolutions. An indefatigable
opponent of opportunism in all forms, after the historic betrayal of
the Second International in August 1914, Lenin set out to construct
61

62
a Third (Communist) International.
Somalia: A History of Imperialist Brutality
1. King Leopold II (1835-1909) — The ruler of Belgium from
1865. He established personal control in 1885 over the Congo Free
State (now Zaire). His exploitation of the colony was notoriously
bloodthirsty, even compared to the brutality being carried out by the
other imperialist powers. He was obliged to hand over control of the
colony to the Belgian government in 1908.
2. Rhodes, Cecil John (1853-1902) — A British imperialist
politician and businessman. He emigrated from Britain to South
Africa in 1870 and made a fortune from the Kimberley diamond
mines. He founded the De Beers Mining Company in 1880. The
following year he entered the Cape Colony parliament and became
premier of Cape Colony from 1890 until he was forced to resign in
1896. He strongly advocated British expansion in Africa.
3. Bismarck, Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von (1815-1898)—
A Prussian statesman and diplomat. His main objective was the
forcible unification of the small German states and the creation of a
single German empire under the hegemony of Junker Prussia.
Bismarck became Chancellor of the German Empire in 1871 following
the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian war. He was a
vicious enemy of the working class movement, authoring the Anti-
Socialist Law (Exceptional Law Against the Socialists) and other
measures. In 1890, the Exceptional Law was canceled. Bismarck
resigned the same year.
4. Ethiopia (Abyssinia) — One of the most ancient kingdoms in
the world. Its former kings claimed descent from the son of King
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. As the kingdom of Axum, it was
prominent from the first to the eighth century and the center of a vast
ivory trade. It was converted to Christianity in the fourth century.
The area was isolated after the Arab conquest of Egypt cut its ties to
Byzantium. At the end of the nineteenth century, Ethiopia was a
landlocked kingdom, striving for control of neighboring Eritrea as a
gateway to the Red Sea.
5. Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945) — The fascist leader who
ruled Italy from 1922-1945. Expelled from the Italian Socialist Party
in 1914 for his rabid, social-patriotic support for World War I, he
organized a militantly antisocialist and semimilitary fascist movement
in 1919. He rose to power in October 1922. After 1926,
bourgeois democratic forms were abolished and the labor movement

was bloodily suppressed. Mussolini was replaced in 1943 byBadoglio.
In 1945 he was captured and executed by Communist Party-led
partisans.
6. League of Nations — The imperialist talk-shop established
by the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. It was a mechanism of
domination by the major imperialist powers. Lenin referred to it as
a "thieves' kitchen." The Soviet Union was admitted as a member and
given a seat on its council in September 1934.
7. Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich (Dzhugashvili) (1879-1953)
— The leading spokesman for the Thermidorean reaction in the
Soviet Union who became the all-powerful Bonapartist dictator
ruling on behalf of the bureaucracy which emerged in the USSR and
of world imperialism. He played an insignificant role in the actual
seizure of power in October 1917 but, under conditions of the
isolation and backwardness of the USSR, came forward as the leading
representative of the petty-bourgeois layers who became more and
more concerned with the advancement of their own material interests
at the expense of the international working class. During the
1930s, he organized the destruction of the Bolshevik Party, the
butchery of the leadership of the Russian Revolution and the physical
annihilation of every representative of Marxist culture in the Soviet
Union. He directed the assassination of Trotsky in August 1940.
8. de Gaulle, Charles Andre Joseph Marie (1890-1970) — A
French soldier and politician. He was president from 1945 to 1946
and from 1958 to 1969. When the French bourgeoisie capitulated
ignominiously to Hitler in 1940, he started the Free French movement
in England, believing that the interests of bourgeois France
would be better served by playing an active role in the war. He was
named premier on June 1,195 8 at the height of the Algerian crisis. He
assumed new and wider powers in an attempt to avert civil war in
France and became the first president of the Fifth Republic. His
government was irreparably weakened by the general strike in May-
June 1968. He resigned in 1969.
9. Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer Leonard (1874-1965) —
One of the leading imperialist politicians of the twentieth century. As
home secretary, he called out troops against striking miners and
dockers in 1911. He was secretary for war and air from 1919 to 1921
and the leading supporter of armed intervention against Soviet
Russia. During the 1926 General Strike he organized the antilabor
government newspaper, the British Gazette. From 1939 to 1940, he
was the first lord of the admiralty, becoming prime minister in 1940.
63

64
He was one of the main shapers of the strategy of the Allied
imperialist powers in World War II and worked closely with Roosevelt.
Defeated overwhelmingly in the 1945 General Election, he was Tory
prime minister again from 1951-55.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945) — US president 1933-
45 during the Great Depression and World War II. His government
recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. Roosevelt developed the New
Deal, a set of policies which included a program of public works and
the introduction of social security. On the eve of the US entry into
World War II, his administration jailed the leadership of the American
Trotskyist organization, the Socialist Workers Party.
Atlantic Charter — Signed by Roosevelt and Churchill on
August 14,1941, before the US entered World War II. It included a
verbal recognition of every people's right to independence and selfdetermination.
This was in line with the spurious claim that World
War II was a war for freedom and against fascism.
10. Vichy France — Marshall Henri Petain headed the government
located in Vichy, a health resort town in south central France,
after the German occupation of northern France in 1940. Under
Laval, the Vichy government continued to collaborate with the Nazis
after the whole of France was occupied in 1942.
Hitler, Adolf (1889-19^5) — The Austrian-born, fascist demagogue
who became the spokesman and all-powerful dictator on
behalf of decaying German imperialism. A sworn enemy of the
proletariat and communism, he expounded his racist and reactionary
views in Mein Kampf. He became a leader of the German National
Socialist Workers Party (Nazis), which, backed by big capital and
taking advantage of the impotence of the Communist and Social
Democratic Parties, took power in 193 3. He set about destroying the
German workers movement and launched a program of expansion of
German imperialism which resulted in World War II.
11. Lend-Lease — A program initiated by Roosevelt in 1941. It
was the way in which US imperialism funded the Allied nations in
World War II. Total aid exceeded $50 billion.
12. Nehru, Jawaharlal (1889-1964) — One of the leading political
representatives of the Indian bourgeoisie. He became the first
prime minister of India after nominal independence in 1947. Nehru
joined the fight against the British occupation of India after the
British massacre of Indian nationalists at Amritsar in 1919. He was
president of the Indian National Congress from 1929 and was jailed
in 1930 for his part in civil disobedience campaigns. He is the author

of Glimpses of World History, a collection of letters to his daughter,
Indira Gandhi, who later became prime minister of India.
Nkrumah, Kwame (1909-1972) —Apolitical representative of
the national bourgeoisie in Ghana. He was prime minister of the
British-ruled Gold Coast from 1951, then of the Independent Republic
of Ghana from 1957. He became its president in 1960,
gradually assuming dictatorial powers. He was overthrown in a
military coup in 1966.
Sukarno (1901-1970) — President of Indonesia from 1945 until
1967. From 1927, he was a leader of the bourgeois wing of the
independence movement which opposed the Dutch occupation of
the archipelago. Imprisoned by the Dutch colonial authorities from
1933 to 1942, he was released by the Japanese with whom he
collaborated. He was instrumental in creating the Republic of Indonesia
in 1945. Like many of the other bourgeois nationalist figures of
the period, Sukarno attempted to maintain some political independence
during the 1950s and 1960s by balancing between imperialism
and Stalinism. The policy proved particularly disastrous for the
working class and peasantry, up to one million of whom were
massacred by the army and its supporters following a military coup in
1965. Sukarno was ousted and replaced by General Suharto.
13. Potsdam Conference — Held in July-August 1945 in
Potsdam, Germany, it was the last inter-Allied conference of World
War II (earlier conferences took place at Tehran and Yalta). It was
attended by the representatives of the victorious imperialist powers
and the Soviet Union. Truman represented the US, Stalin, the USSR
and Churchill represented Britain until he was replaced by Clement
Attlee. They agreed that a four-power Allied Control Council would
rule defeated Germany.
14. Molotov, VyacheslavMikhailovich (Skriabin) (1890-1986)
— Stalin's right-hand man during the bloody liquidation of the
Russian Marxists in the 1930s. He functioned as president of the
Comintern during the disastrous ultraleft "Third Period" and as
president of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930-1941.
Later, as commissar of foreign affairs, he accompanied Stalin to the
Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences. He opposed Khrushchev
and the limited revelations of Stalin's crimes in 1956, and was ousted
from the leadership. Expelled from the CPSU in 1961, he was
readmitted in 1984.
15. Nasser, Gamal Abdel (1918-1970) — Led a military coup
d'etat which overthrew King Farouk of Egypt in 1952. He ended the
65

citish military presence in Egypt in 1954 and nationalized the Suez
,anal in 1956. President of Egypt from 1956, he claimed to be
nplementing "Arab socialism," but in reality was a political repre-
.entative of the Arab bourgeoisie. Nasser's experiment in achieving
'pan-Arab union" by uniting Egypt with Syria to form the United
Arab Republic in 1956 collapsed when Syria seceded in 1961. Under
his leadership, Egypt suffered a disastrous setback in the 1967 war
with Israel.
16. Eisenhower,- Dwight David (1890-1969) — Commander of
the Allied troops in Europe for the last two years of World War II and
commander of NATO in 1950. He became US president 1953-61,
the first Republican to hold office for 20 years. During his presidency
the McCarthy witchhunt reached its high point. One of Eisenhower's
first acts as president was to refuse to commute the sentence on Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed June 18, 1953 after being
framed on espionage charges. In 1957, Eisenhower dispatched federal
troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce an antisegregation
court order. His terms as president saw some of highest peacetime
military budgets ever proposed. When he retired at the age of 70, he
warned of the potential for "misplaced power" entailed in the "military-industrial
complex."
17. Kenyatta, Jomo (1891-1978) — A Kenyan bourgeois nationalist.
He was imprisoned by the British in 1953 and accused of
leading the Mau Mau rebellion, which he denied. Released in 1961,
he became the first president of Kenya from 19(Ato 1978. He was one
of the most influential of the African nationalist leaders, but proved
as incapable as the others of finding any lasting solution to the
problems faced by the African masses.
18. Haile Selassie, Ethiopian emperor (1892-1975) — Under
the name of Ras Tafari, he reigned from 1930 to 1974. He was driven
out by the Italian invasion in 1936 and restored to the throne by
British imperialism in 1941. He was overthrown in a military coup in
1974.
19. Mengistu Haile Murium, Lt. Col. (1937- ) — Led the
military coup against Haile Selassie in 1974. He became head of state
in 1977. With the backing of the Soviet Union, he embarked on an
economic program known as Ethiopia First, which included nationalization.
As relations with the Soviet Union began to weaken
following the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan and Angola, Mengistu
attempted to improve relations with the US. In March 1990,
Mengistu's pretension to "Ethiopian socialism" came to an end and

he began the process of privatization, espousing free market principles.
On May 21,1991, with his army facing defeat by secessionists
in Eritrea and insurrectionists in Tigre province, Mengistu fled the
country, eventually being granted political asylum in Zimbabwe.
2 0. Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich (1931- ) — General secretary
of the Stalinist Communist Party of the USSR from March
1985 following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. He presided
over the turn by the Stalinist bureaucracy to the policies of capitalist
restoration. A member of the Central Committee from 1971 and of
the Politburo from 1980, Gorbachev in 1990 and 1991 supported the
imperialist assault on Iraq, which had been a longstanding ally of the
Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned as the leader of the Communist
Party August 24, 1991 following an unsuccessful coup attempt
against his government. He resigned as Soviet president December
2 5,1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the announcement
of the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States,
a collection of bourgeois states.
67

The carve-up of the Horn of Africa (1862-1925)
69

The Horn of Africa today

Abdullahi Issa, 35-36
Abyssinia, 32
Addis Ababa, 28,31
Aden, 25, 27-28
Adowa, 28
Afghanistan, 42
AFL-CIO, 9
Africa, 13-14, 33; colonial carve-up of,
19, 25-27
Aidid, Mohamed Farah, 43, 56-57
Albania, 13
Algeria, 34
Ali Shermarke, Abdirashi, 36-37, 39
Allies, 31
Angola, 6-7, 19, 52-53
Arabs, and Somalia, 24
Assab, 25,27
Assemblea Nazionale, 38
Adantic Charter, 31
Axis, 31
Bab el Mandeb, 41
Balkans, 21, 59
Bangladesh, 6
Beirut, 7
Belgium, 25,47, 52
Berbera, 6, 14,29,40,42
Berlin, conference of 1885, 27
Bismarck, 27
Boers, 26
Index
73
Bosnia, 8, 13,48, 59
Bourgeois nationalists, see National Bourgeoisie
Breakdown of postwar order, 12
Bridgestone Corp., 53
Britain, 26, 28, 30, 36, 43; and Horn of
Africa, 14,34-3 5; colonial empire, 31,
33-34; role in Somalia, 7, 24-25, 27-
32, 34-36, 39
British East Africa Company, 28
British Empire, 31
Brokaw, Tom, 1
Bulgaria, 13
Bulletin, 2-3, 17,51,58
Burma, 13
Bush administration, 5, 23, 44, 59
Bush, George, 1, 3,6, 7,9, 11, 14,17-18
Cambodia, 8, 13
Carletti, Tommaso, 29
Carter administration, 42
Central Command, US, 24
China, 13,27,33
Churchill, 31,33
CIA 2, 8-9, 52
Clinton administration, 9,13,48, 55, 60
Clinton, Bill, 1,3,9,11,14,23,59
Cohen, Richard, 8
Cold War, 7, 14,23
Colonialism, return to, see Recolonization

74
Commissionaire, 26
Congo, 25, 52
Congress, US, 9, 11, 15
Crispi, 28
Croatia, 13
Cuba, 13,20,41,49
Davidson, Basil, 38-39
Defense Planning Guidance, 13
de Gaulle, 31-32
Democratic Party, 9-10, 14, 59
Dergue, The, 41
Dervishes, 28-29
Desert Storm, 10
Djibouti, 24, 27-28, 32, 35, 37
Dos Santos, Jose Eduardo, 52
East Africa Protectorate, 28
East Africa, 32
East Asia, 13
Eden, Anthony, 36
Egal, Mohammed Hadji Ibrahim, 39-40
Egypt, 13, 35, 36; role in Somalia, 24-25,
27
Eisenhower administration, 36
El Salvador, 13
England, see Britain
Eritrea, 23, 25, 27-28, 30-32, 34-36,41-
42
Ethiopia, 13, 23, 27-28, 29-33, 35-36;
emperor of, 28, 41; famine in, 42
Europe, 8; colonial empires of, 14
Four Power Commission, 3 5
Fourth International, 15
France, 25, 27, 30, 36,43, 52; and Horn
of Africa, 14, 27-28; colonial empire
of, 31, 33-34; role in Somalia, 7, 24-
25, 27-28, 32, 35-37; workers movement
in, 34
French Communist Party, 34
French Foreign Legion, 12, 18, 44
Galibaribur, 29
Germany, 8, 13, 25, 30-31, 33,43-44
Gorbachev, 42
Greece, 34
Grenada, 7, 59
Guatemala, 13
Haiti, 8-9,20
Haud, 36
Helms, Richard, 2, 8
Hider, 32
Hoagland, Jim, 8
Horn of Africa, 6,13-14,57; history of 1-
2,23-25, 31
"Humanitarianism," claimed as motivation
for US invasion, 1, 5, 7, 11, 17,
19,21,47,51,55,60
Hussein, Saddam, 1, 19,48
Imperialism, American 2, 8, 10, 13, 15,
19,21,31,41,55; and recolonization,
43-44,53; conflicts within, 13,31-32,
43; European, 2; see also Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, United States.
India, 13,20
Indo-China, 33-34
Indonesia, 13, 33
International Committee of the Fourth
International, 10, 60
International Monetary Fund, 7, 12, 19,
42
Iran, 13-14,42
Iraq, 6, 13, 59; US war against, 9-10,15,
20,24
Isaak, 42
Ise, 27
Israel, 13
Italian East Africa, 31
Italy, 25, 31, 34, 43; and the Horn of
Africa, 14, 25, 27; role in Somalia 7,
24, 27-32, 35-36; war against Ethiopia,
28, 30; workers movement in, 34
Jackson, Jesse, 10
James, Lawrence, 26
Jane's Defence Weekly, 13
Japan, 8, 13, 31,43
Jidali, 29
Kagnew, 42
Kenya, 13,24, 28, 30,35, 39
Kenyatta, Jomo, 39
Kinshasa, 52
Kismayu, 30, 47, 56
Kohl, Helmut, 44
Korea, 13

Kuwait, 7
Latin America, 13, 20
League of Nations, 30
Lebanon, 13
Lend-Lease, 33
Lenin, 12
Leopold II, King of Belgium, 25-26
Lewis, I.M., 38
Liberia, 9,20-21, 53
Libya, 13, 30, 34-35; US bombing of, 7
Lorenz, Col. F.M., 48
Madagascar, 24, 27
Maine, battleship, 7
Marxism, 2, 12
Mason, Peter, 26
Massawa, 27
Media, role in Somalia war, 1-3,5-6,18-
20,23,47,51,57,60
Medishe, 29
Mengistu Haile Mariam, 41
Middle East, 13,33
Militarism, growth in US, 8-9,15,49,59-
60
Mobutu Sese Seko, 52
Mogadishu, 1, 11,18,24, 35, 39,43,47,
51, 55-57, 59-60
Mohammed, Ali Mahdi, 43
Molotov, 34
Mombasa, 24
Morocco, 13
Moscow bureaucracy, see Stalinist bureaucracy
Mozambique, 6, 7, 19-20
Muhammad bin Abdullah Hassan, 28-
29,35
Musal, Hussein, 48
Mussolini, Benito, 30
Nasser, Gamel Abdel, 35-36
National bourgeoisie, in the colonial
countries, 34, 40, 44
Nehru, 34
New World Order, 8
New York Times, The, 13,18,21,53,57
Nicaragua, 13
Nigeria, 44
Nile, 32, 35
Nkrumah, 34
Noriega, Manuel, 1, 19
North Africa, 32
North Korea, 8
Northern Frontier District, 35, 39
75
Oakley, Robert, 2, 58
Obock, 25, 27
Ogaden, the, 24,28-30,35,36,39,41-42
Operation Restore Hope, 17,47, 51, 57
Ottoman Empire, 25
Pakistan, 44
Pan American Airways, 33
Panama, 59
Papua New Guinea, 13
Peck, Col. Fred, 55-56
Pentagon, 13-14, 18, 47
Persia, and Somalia, 24
Persian Gulf, 48
Persian Gulf War, 24
Peru, 13
Philippines, the, 13
Postwar period, 19
Potsdam Conference, 34
Reagan, Ronald, 7
Reagan administration, 42
Recolonization, 8, 10-12, 20, 43-44, 48,
51,53,56
Red Sea, 27
RENAMO, 7, 19
Republican Party, 9, 14, 59
Rhodes, Cecil, 27
Romania, 13
Roosevelt, 31
Salihiya Order, 28
Save the Children Fund, 48
Savimbi, Jonas, 52
Serbia, 20,49
Siad Barre, Mohammed, 2, 7, 39-43; relations
with US, 14, 19,42,44
Somali Democratic Republic, 39
Somali lands, 34
Somali National Movement (SNM), 39,
42-43
Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), 42-
43

76
Somali people, divided up by colonial
boundaries, 24,35,37,39; opposition
to Italian restoration, 35-36;
precolonial history, 24
Somali Republic, 36
Somali Youth League (SYL), 35-36
Somalia Relief Agency, 6
Somalia, 7-8, 12-14, 38-40, 44; bourgeoisie
of, 37-38; claim of socialist
state in, 7, 40-41; colonial conquest
of, 23-25, 27-28; economic and cultural
backwardness of, 3 7,40-41; famine
in, 5-6,17-19,43-44, 51, 57; history
as colony, 3,28-36; history since
independence, 36-43; rebellion
against British, 28-29; strategic significance
of, 2, 6, 13, 18-19, 23; US
occupation of, 1, 3, 5, 7-9, 11-13, 17,
21,23,44,47,55,57; war with Ethiopia,
41. See also Somaliland, Siad Barre
Somaliland, British, 24-25,27,32,35-36,
39, 43
Somaliland, French, 24, 27, 32, 35-36
Somaliland, Italian, 27, 32-35
Somaliland, Republic of, 43
Somalis, as oppressed nationality in Ethiopia,
41; killed during US occupation,
11-12,20,47-48,51,55-58
South Africa, 52
Southeast Asia, 13, 33
Southwest Asia, 13
Soviet bureaucracy, 7-9, 34, 40, 44
Soviet Union, 8,13,20,42; collapse of, 8-
9, 12, 43; role in Horn of Africa, 14,
30, 39, 41; role in Somalia, 40-41
Soyo, 53
Spanish-American War of 1898, 7
Stalin, Joseph, 30, 34
Stalinist bureaucracy. See Soviet bureaucracy.
State Department, 42, 53
Sudan, 13,21,27, 32
Suez Canal, 23, 25, 36
Sukarno, 34
Suriname, 13
Taleh, 29
Tanganyika, 44
Thailand, 13
Tigre, 41
Trade union bureaucracy, 15, 60
Trusteeship. See UN
Tshisekedi, Etienne, 52
Turkey, 13
Uganda, 35
UN General Assembly, 3 5
UN Security Council, 44
UN trust territory. See UN trusteeship
UNITA 7, 19, 52-53
United Auto Workers, 9
United Nations, 2, 9, 12, 20, 33, 53;
blockade of Iraq, 6, 20; role in Somalia,
7, 19, 34-36, 56, 59; trusteeships,
12, 34-36, 53
United Somali Congress, (USC), 42-43
United States, 6, 33, 43, 52; decay of
democracy in, 9, 14-15; role in Horn
of Africa, 2,14,23-24,30-35,42; role
in Somalia, 6-7, 34-35,42
Vichy France, 32
Vietnam, 7, 13
Wall Street Journal, 12, 49
Walwal, 30
"Warlords," 1, 19, 56
Washington Post, 8, 47-48
Western Europe, 13, 33-34
Western Somali Liberation Front
(WSLF), 39,41
Withdrawal of US troops, demand for,
15,49, 60
Workers League, 2-3, 10-11, 15, 17, 60
World Bank, 7, 12, 19,42
World War I, 29-30
World Warn, 31
Yemen, 24
Young, Andrew, 2, 9-10, 20
Yugoslavia, 13
Zaire, 13, 52-53
Zanzibar, Sultan of, 28
Zeila, 27-28
Zimbabwe, 44

Desert Slaughter
The Imperialist War against Iraq
Statements of the Workers League
A collection of articles, statements and speeches
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brought together in this book. It presents a comprehensive
analysis of the Persian Gulf crisis, from the
Iraqi occupation of Kuwait through the US-led
assault on Iraq, and the postwar explosions in the
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decision out of the hands of the White House and
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The Revolution Betrayed
What Is the Soviet Union
& Where Is It Going?
Leon Trotsky
The Revolution Betrayed was authored by Stalin's
greatest political opponent, Leon Trotsky, the coleader,
along with Lenin, of the 1917 October Revolution.
His profound analysis of the contradictory
state that issued from the first socialist revolution in
world history equips today's reader to understand
the historical background of the collapse of the
USSR. Trotsky's monumental work analyzes the
Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union and advances
the program of political revolution by the
working class against the parasitic bureaucracy. This
unequalled analysis of the dynamics of Soviet society
provides the theoretical framework necessary to
understand the process which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet state and the
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322 pages, ISBN 0-929087-48-8
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The Heritage We Defend
A Contribution to the History
of the Fourth International
David North
The
Heritage
This book represents a significant contribution
to an examination of the history of the Fourth
International. The world Marxist organization was
founded in 1938 by Stalin's most implacable oppo­ Defend
nent, Leon Trotsky. Written in the style of a Marxist
polemic and based on massive original research, this
volume covers an especially broad field of historical
events, from World War II to the rise of Gorbachev.
The author's review of the theoretical disputes within
the Fourth International provides exceptionally relevant
and valuable insights into the significance of
the most burning contemporary events, especially
the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe
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examines the contribution of James P. Cannon.
539pages, ISBN 0-929087-00-3
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Gerry Healy
and His Place in the History
of the Fourth International
David North
Gerry Healy died at the age of 76 on December
14,1989, after a career in the revolutionary workers
movement that spanned six decades. This book
assesses the political lessons of the struggle waged by
Healy in the British and international Trotskyist
movement and of his ultimate opportunist degeneration
and break with the International Committee
in 1985. In 1961-63, as the leader of the SLL of
Britain, he played the principal role in the struggle
of the ICFI aga inst the S WP's betrayal ofTrotskyism.
North explains how Healy developed an increasingly
nationalist conception of the building of
the Trotskyist movement, and came to subordinate
the work of the world party to the practical tasks confronting its British section. He
explains the circumstances under which the revolutionary Marxists waged a counterattack
against the WRP opportunists which ultimately won the support of the majority of the
sections of the International Committee. The author gives a vivid picture of Healy's great
political strengths as well as the political weaknesses that contributed to his degeneration.
117pages, ISBN 0-929087-58-5
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Perestroika Vs. Socialism
Stalinism and the Restoration
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David North
Written in 1989, this is a Marxist analysis of the
precapitalist direction of the policies of the
Gorbachev regime. In opposition to the overwhelming
mass of literature which appeared on developments
during the period in which Gorbachev headed
the USSR, this book maintains that perestroika was
neither a break with Stalinism nor a genuine revival
of Soviet democracy. Rather, the author contends,
the policies of Gorbachev, rooted in the material
interests of the most powerful sections of the Soviet
bureaucracy, were the culmination of the Stalinist
betrayal of the October Revolution. The book reviews
the significance of the new concept of socialism
which was devised by Gorbachev and his supporters,
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establishment of capitalism in the USSR and the transformation of the bureaucracy into
a new Soviet bourgeoisie.
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Solidarity in Poland,
1980-1981
and the Perspective
of Political Revolution
Wolfgang Weber
Solidarity in Poland'
This work provides the historical background
to the present crisis of revolutionary leadership in 1980-1981
Poland and in the. other former Stalinist regimes. and the Pcnqpfetive
Based on original research, the book traces the
historical and social origins, the international context
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working class in 1980-81. It deals as well with the
various political tendencies within Solidarity and
demonstrates that the decisive weakness of Solidarity
was the narrow-minded, conciliatory and nationalist
political program of all the tendencies within
the leadership, which the Stalinist regime consciously .
of Political Revolution
exploited in order to create the conditions for the military coup. Weber also elucidates the
theoretical and political weapons for future victories of the proletariat in the former Soviet
Union, Eastern Europe and China: the Trotskyist perspective of international socialism.
157 pages, ISBN 0-929087-30-5
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Wotfg

The Mark Curtis Hoax
How the Socialist Workers Party
Tried to Dupe the Labor Movement
Martin McLaughlin
Examines the fraudulent defense campaign
waged on an international scale for Mark Curtis, a
leading member of the Socialist Workers Party, who
was arrested and convicted in 1988 of raping a 15year-old
black high school girl. The SWp claimed
that Curtis was the victim of a police frame-up,
although he was arrested inside the victim's home
after her 11-year-old brother called the 911 emergency
number.
This book makes a detailed examination of the
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that Curtis is guilty. It compares the Curtis
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frame-up victims, from Sacco and Vanzetti to
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Gary Tyler, and shows that the SWP campaign is a political
fraud. It includes an appendix with letters from many of those who have repudiated their
support for the campaign after learning the facts of the case.
253gages,^>botograpbs, ISBN 0-929087-46-1
The Gelfand Case
A Legal History of the Exposure
of US Government Agents
in the Leadership of the
Socialist Workers Party
2 Volumes
These volumes contain the texts of all key briefs,
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legal proceedings of an extraordinary case, which
brought into the open the government violation of
basic democratic rights; the infiltration of the Socialist
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The 1983 federal court trial in Los Angeles
established that the government takeover of the
SWP had its origins in the preparations by the
Stalinist secret police, the GPU, for the assassination
of Leon Trotsky.
THE
GELFAND
CASE
A ; 1 i.Al. HIM' '(H Or
iiil. I )>l Rf Of
i > u'Vins\;r\r.uiivis
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siK'l \l 1>T 'AHUM Us r \|i ; y
The foreword explains the political and historical context of the lawsuit brought by
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2-volume set, ISBN 0-929087-04, US $24.00;
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